User:Anne H. Pollack/sandbox



Abbas Ahmadi Motlagh was born in Tehran in 1958. He began his film career as an actor at the age of 11. Over the next eight years, He appeared in various amateur productions and eventually enrolled in Tehran University's School of Fine Arts in 1977. There he studied theater, directing and starred in several theater productions.

After the 1979 revolution, he held a range of positions in state-owned television, working in TV series production teams, supervising projects, and managing a special feature throughout the 8-year Iran-Iraq war. He also spent a year hosting a nightly program covering the war efforts. His international exposure started in the mid-80's when he joined the Foreign Purchasing Team and advised officials on matters of international relations and cinema research.

He established what later became the Tehran International Fajr Festival, the most important annual event in the country's film industry. As an interim director of the Farabi Foundation, the highest authority in Iranian film production, he launched the Screenwriters' Committee in 1983 and remained an active member of the Foundation until His departure from Iran several years later.

Motlagh delved into script-writing around this time, writing two screen plays: "Suitcase" and "The City of Mice." Following these projects, he directed and produced numerous commercials. Abbas Ahmadi Motlagh made His first feature film in 1986, entitled "The Hen and the Neighbor." It received critical praise in Berlin, Delhi, and Fajr Film Festivals. After moving to the U.S. in 1991, he studied film at Brooklyn College and continued making documentary and commercial films, most notably for the famed Iranian artist Mahmoud Farshchian. He directed and produced two anti-war documentaries, "Time to Arm" and "My Home is A Nightmare." both exploring experiences of U.S. military soldiers and veterans.

In 2006, He traveled back to Iran to direct "The Bad Friend," a comedy film which was a box office hit. Later, eager to do projects that were closer to his heart and more representative of his filmmaking style, he wrote and directed "Across the River." Though banned in Iran, it was accepted by more than 20 film festivals around the world and received the Special Jury Award in 2007 at the Religion Today International Film Festival in Trento, Italy. "Across the River" was also nominated for Best Film in the Hawaii International Film Festival. His more recent projects include: "A Call from Hostages", produced and aired by BBC World "Yazd, Harmony with Destiny", an hour-long documentary about the ancient city of Yazd, Iran, "A Requiem for New York", which is His latest short film (26 mins) "A Requiem for New York" is a surreal drive through New York during the Covid pandemic lockdown, as experienced by the narrator, a New Yorker himself. It juxtaposes the impact of the pandemic as well as a brief history of the city's disasters with masked faces of ordinary people. A version of this film aired on a London-based satellite television channel, Iran International.

"Hostages" an HBO four-part documentary mini-series, Directed by Abbas Motlagh, received the 2023 Emmy for 'Best Historical Documentary.'

He is currently Directior/Producer/Editor of the forthcoming documentary: "Men Who Dance."