Bahman Ghobadi (Kurdish: بههمهن قوبادی) is an Iranian film director of Kurdish ethnicity. He was born on February 1, 1969 in Baneh, Kurdistan Province. Ghobadi belongs to the so called "new wave" of Iranian cinema. He was born in Baneh, a northwestern Kurdish Province of Iran. His family moved to Sanandaj in 1981. Ghobadi received a Bachelor of Arts in film directing from Iran Broadcasting College. After a brief career in industrial photography, Ghobadi began making short 8 mm films. His documentary Life In Fog won numerous awards. Bahman Ghobadi was assistant director on Abbas Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us.[citation needed] Bahman Ghobadi founded Mij Film in 2000, a company with the aim of production of films in Iran about its different ethnic groups. His first feature film was A Time for Drunken Horses (2000), the first Kurdish film produced in Iran.[who?] The film won the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His second feature was Marooned in Iraq (2002), which brought him the Gold Plaque from the Chicago International Film Festival. His third feature, Turtles Can Fly, followed in 2004, winning the Glass Bear and Peace Film Award at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.[citation needed] In 2006, Ghobadi's Half Moon won the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. Iran's renowned actors Golshifteh Farahani, Hassan Poorshirazi and Hedyeh Tehrani acted in this movie. The music of the movie was made by Iran's musician Hossein Alizadeh. The film, which was a collaborative project by Iran, France, Austria and Iraq, was shot fully in Iranian Kurdistan. However, it narrates the story of a group of Iranian Kurdish musicians who would like to travel to Iraqi Kurdistan and organize a concert there. In 2006, Index on Censorship gave Ghobadi an Index Film Award for making a significant contribution to freedom of expression through his film Turtles Can Fly. In May 2009, his film No One Knows About Persian Cats won an Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize Ex-aequo when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. This film chronicles the hardships facing young Iranian musicians seeking to evade censorship.
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