Kīmīyāyī, Masʿūd (1941-)

Masoud Kimiai is an Iranian director, screenwriter and producer. He was born in 1941 in Tehran, Iran. Kimiai started his career as an assistant director and made his debut, Come Stranger, in 1968. With his second film, Kaiser/ Qeysar (1969), he caused a historical change in the Iranian film industry. The film became a great success at the box office and opened the way for many young, talented filmmakers who never had a chance in the industry before. His films deal with people in the margin of the society and his anti-hero characters die at the end. Many directors of commercial films imitated his Kaiser/ Qeysar film for about 6 years, but in the last decade he focuses on young antagonists. He usually writes his screenplays, using slang dialogs based on ordinary traditional people’s dialect. In 1991 he was awarded a prize in Berlin Film Festival for his Snake Fang (Dandan-e-mar) as his sole international prize, but received many prizes in domestic festivals.