Maziar Bahari

The World's Fakest News Team tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and pop culture.

In 2009, Iranian Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari was covering Iran's volatile elections for Newsweek. One of the few reporters living in the country with access to US media, he made an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in a taped interview with comedian Jason Jones. The interview was intended as satire, but if the Tehran authorities got the joke they didn't like it - and it would quickly came back to haunt Bahari when he was rousted from his family home and thrown into prison.

The Arab Spring in Egypt: From a dictator to free elections, back to a dictatorship. One comedy show united the country and tested the limits of free press. This is the story of Bassem Youssef, a cardiologist turned comedian, the Jon Stewart of Egypt, and his show "The Show".

A shocking portrait of the world of a recently captured serial killer, who sees his killing of prostitutes as in accordance with Islamic teaching. Over the space of a year, 16 women were murdered in the Iranian city of Mashad. Because the victims were lured into the killer's traps, the press soon called these the "spider killings." All but one of the victims had previously been arrested for prostitution and drug-related crimes. When a 39-year-old contractor is arrested and confesses to the crimes, he claims divine support for his crimes. His mother, wife, son, and many neighbors agree. AND ALONG CAME A SPIDER visits with the families of the victims, with the perpetrator and his family, and with prostitutes in this holy city. Most chillingly, the killer's son proudly re-enacts a murder, and suggests that he wants to grow up to be like his father. This is a chilling film about cycles of moral vengeance.

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Documentary on the German luxury liner St. Louis that sailed from Hamburg to Cuba in 1939 carrying 937 German Jews. For 30 excruciating days the ship wandered the seas and was refused haven by every country in the Americas.

An Iranian Odyssey demystifies the current perception of Iran as an irrational and erratic pariah state. The film is not only a historical documentary. It is a relevant modern story that clearly tells the reasons behind the current stand-off between Iran and the West.

Upon his release from prison, Mansour Omari, a Syrian POW and torture survivor, risked his life by writing the names of his fellow cellmates in blood and rust on scraps of cloth and sewing them into his shirt. The film follows Omari, now in exile, as he travels to Holocaust memorial sites in Germany and reflects on how to bring attention to the brutal regime he escaped. Along with the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, he is preparing to display the cloths so that the names of his 82 cellmates will not be forgotten. Warning: Graphic images

Since its earliest days, the Iranian regime has relied on forced, televised confessions to humiliate and discredit its opponents and instill fear in its citizens. In FORCED CONFESSIONS, director Maziar Bahari seeks out other writers and intellectuals who-like himself-were tortured and forced falsely make detailed declarations of guilt. (Bahari chronicled his story in the book Then They Came, which forms the basis for Jon Stewart's film ROSEWATER.)

Armita Abbasi was never a conformist. When Iran’s nationwide protests erupted in September 2022, after the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini, she joined thousands of other young Iranians in taking to the streets and calling for change. Armita paid a terrible price for her principles: but she doesn’t regret it and believes that the changes she seeks are coming to her country.