Sohrab Shahid Saless

Personal Info

Known For Director

Gender Male

Birthday 1944-06-28

Deathday 1998-07-02 (54 years old)

Place of Birth Qazvin, Iran

Also Known As سهراب شهید ثالث, Sohrab Shaheed Salles

Sohrab Shahid Saless

Biography

Sohrab Shahid-Saless was born in Tehran in 1944 to a middle-class family and lived in Tehran. Saless was a storyteller as a child, with a passion for visualizing his narrations. In 1963, Shahid Saless left Iran for Vienna, where he attended a film school and an acting school at the same time, but his studies were discontinued there in 1967 due to a sudden diagnosis of tuberculosis. In the midst of treatment, he left for Paris to continue his film studies at the prestigious Independent Conservatory of French Cinema, and shortly thereafter, in 1968, he returned to Iran. Upon his return to Tehran, Shahid Saless began work with the Iranian Ministry of Culture as a documentary filmmaker, where he produced multiple short films and documentaries, partly on the topic of traditional dance amongst different Iranian ethnic groups. In the course of his stay in Iran (1968–74), he produced two major feature films, Yek ettefāq-e sāda (A Simple Event, 1973) and Ṭabiʿat-e bijān (Still Life, 1974), both of which won major international awards for their social realist depiction of life in Iran and for their innovative cinematographic and experimental style.Shahid Saless also made several short films for the Ministry of Culture and Arts. He made many commissioned films on the local folkloric dances of various ethnic groups. He also started making short documentaries depicting the unnerving condition of life among the working class. Unsurprisingly, the political subversive message of these films was disliked by the government, and Shahid Saless was forced to leave the country. Settled in Germany in 1974, Shahid Saless started producing documentaries for the German media. The movies he made gained him further international recognition, and he continued making documentary and feature films for major German television programs. He made his last movie, Rosen für Afrika, in 1991 for German television. In 1992, he left Germany for the United States to join his family. He died from a chronic illness related to his liver from which he suffered throughout his life. Shahid Saless is known to be a pioneer of the new wave of Iranian cinema. In his own words, his cinema intends to document the “antagonism between man and society”. In the course of his oeuvre, he viewed the role of cinema as “to make conscious of indignity and inhumanity of life".

Known For

Director

1992
Roses for Africa

as Director

1987
Changeling

as Director

1984
The Willow Tree

as Director

1983
Utopia

as Director

1983
1980
1980
All in Order

as Director

1978
Still Life

as Director

1977
Diary of a Lover

as Director

1976
Time of Maturity

as Director

1975
Far From Home

as Director

1973
A Simple Event

as Director

1972
Black and White

as Director

1971
If...?

as Director

1969
2nd Asian Expo

as Director

Writer

1992
1988
Ein Unding der Liebe

as Screenplay

1984
The Willow Tree

as Writer

1983
Utopia

as Writer

1983
1980
All in Order

as Writer

1978
Still Life

as Screenplay

1977
1976
1975
Far From Home

as Writer

1973
A Simple Event

as Screenplay

1972
Black and White

as Writer

Actor

2016
Sohrab, A Journey

as Self (archive footage)

1983
Telestar

as Self

1968
Beyond the Barrier of Sound

as man waiting for the bus (uncredited)

Editor

1974
Harmonica

as Editor

1972
Black and White

as Editor

Art

1978
Still Life

as Art Direction