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Sohrab Shahid Saless

Sohrab Shahid Saless

Directing

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

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Annual awarding of the Grimme Awards.

Grimme Award

1964
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No description available.

Telestar

1983
Meteor: Sohrab Shahid Saless
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Meteor: Sohrab Shahid Saless by Mahmoud Behraznia is a documentary with a different perspective on Sohrab Shahid Saless, a leading Iranian filmmaker. Someone whose viewpoint at cinema and the special type of aesthetics he used in his films has been a path-breaker for many Iranian filmmakers. The film provides the viewer with new information about the life and work of Sohrab Shahid Saless in Germany.

Meteor: Sohrab Shahid Saless

2021
A Simple Event
6.1

The story of a ten years old Iranian schoolboy living with his mother and his father in Northern coasts of Iran. The boy helps his father in selling the latter's illegal fishing and helps his mother in shopping for her and bringing home water from a well. The three characters live together in only one room. Their life is austere. The boy eats only bread and milk every day... One day the boy's mother dies.

A Simple Event

1973
Harmonica
7.0

Set on the southern coast of Iran, "Harmonica" begins as a young boy receives a musical present from abroad. Fascinated and envious, his friends make him the leader of the pack, as they compete for the privilege of holding the harmonica or even blowing a few notes, until the games and horseplay begin to take on a sinister edge.

Harmonica

1974
Far from Home
7.0

Turkish migrant Husseyin spends his days in hypnotic routine as a “guest worker” in ‘70s West Berlin, living in a small, shared apartment and commuting daily to his job at a factory pressing machine parts. Diligently saving up his wages he hopes to one day marry and buy a house back home, but his immediate future in Berlin is clouded by indignities at the hands of racist coworkers and botched attempts at romantic intimacy.

Far from Home

1975
Still Life
7.0

A railway crossing guard and his wife live in a routine of total isolation and uneventfulness.

Still Life

1978
Bleeding Heart
10.0

Left behind by his mother, an alcoholic prostitute, Georg grew up carelessly with his aunt and grandmother. As an adult he works in a department store canteen and has become an outsider due to his shape and infantile appearance.

Bleeding Heart

1988
Black and White
7.0

Short film made with stop motion animation techniques.

Black and White

1972
Time of Maturity
7.1

A young boy learns of his mother's occupation while trying to save money for a bicycle.

Time of Maturity

1976
Hans: A Young Man in Germany
7.0

A young man lives through the end of World War II

Hans: A Young Man in Germany

1985
The Willow Tree
9.0

An elderly man lives a solitary and rhythmic life by a dilapidated mill near a river. His days are spent almost entirely in silence, fishing under the shade of a massive, ancient willow tree that seems as old and weathered as he is. One Sunday, while fishing, he witnesses a murder.

The Willow Tree

1984
Grabbe's Last Summer
5.0

Depiction of the short life of the influential, troubled playwright Christian Dietrich Grabbe. Impoverished and suffering from illness, Grabbe returns to his hometown of Detmold in 1823 seeking peace and reconciliation. His final days are marked by rapidly deteriorating health, an intense struggle with alcohol, and complex, strained relationships with his sister and friends who attempt to care for him.

Grabbe's Last Summer

1980
Addressee Unknown
10.0

A woman leaves her husband and starts living with a Turkish man.

Addressee Unknown

1983
Roses for Africa
4.8

A psychodrama about how injustice is turned into oblivion about an opportunity worker and a woman from the civil house of a marriage for 30 years . Soon the relationship fails due to the aggressive, also destructive tendencies of the man who enters a deep personal crisis. When the marriage coined/shaped of force and Psychoterror goes finally into the breaks, the man looks for comfort in the alcohol and becomes criminal.

Roses for Africa

1992
Utopia
6.3

A treatise on love and desire tainted by harsh reality of capitalism, in which submission to the laws of lust-as-commerce is played out by five prostitutes and their pimp, who pits them against one another so that they are incapable of standing up to him collectively.

Utopia

1983
All in Order
6.5

Herbert (Heinz Lieven) is a solid, middle-class engineer who one day quits his job and ensconces himself at home (preferably in the bathroom), refusing to say very much to anyone. His wife (Dorothea Moritz ) is all the more upset at his behavior because on Sunday mornings he goes out into the street and yells at the top of his lungs for everyone to "get up." Eventually, the hard-working wife who is also earning their support convinces Herbert to go to a clinic for treatment. But is it a clinic he needs? Or is Herbert rebelling against a society that is too ordered, too sterile, too buried in the monotony of routine?

All in Order

1980
The Long Vacation of Lotte H. Eisner
7.0

Historian, author, and movie critic Lotte H. Eisner is the subject of this documentary. She recalls her early childhood in Germany and her association with such legendary directors as F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. Leaving Germany for Paris in 1933, her anticipation of WW II saw her relocating to the South of France. Eisner gives her considerable and insightful opinions on classic German Expressionist Films, as several of her admirers drop by during the interview conducted by director Sohrab Shadid-Saless.

The Long Vacation of Lotte H. Eisner

1979
Diary of a Lover
6.6

A diary of a lonely 30 year old man who works as a butcher in a supermarket. The movie shows his daily life between the supermarket and his flat. His ability to communicate is limited. From time to time his mother visits him. But his relationship to her is rather reserved. Constantly he's waiting for his girlfriend which is not visiting him anymore after they had a fight.

Diary of a Lover

1977
2nd Asian Expo
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video report of the 2nd Asian international trade fair ran from 5 to 24 October 1969 in Tehran-Iran.

2nd Asian Expo

1969