filmmakers
Iranian director Mehrjui and wife murdered
The Iranian film director Dariush Mehrjui and his wife Wahideh Mohammadifar in Tehran in 2015. photo
© Abdolvahed Mirzazadeh/Iranian Students’ News Agency, ISNA/AP/dpa
With the film “The Cow” from 1969, Dariusch Mehrdschuier won the audience award at the Venice Film Festival in 1971 and became internationally known. Now he and his wife were found dead.
After killing a well-known director and his wife Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi urged the authorities to quickly clarify the matter. The head of government ordered law enforcement and security agencies to work on the case with “double seriousness and speed,” according to a government statement on Monday.
The well-known director Dariush Mehrjui and his wife Wahideh Mohammadifar were killed on Saturday. According to a report in the newspaper “Shargh”, the Iranian director’s daughter found the couple in their villa. The two were stabbed in the neck with a knife or a sharp object, the newspaper reported, citing police.
Mehrjui was one of the pioneers of the New Iranian Film, into which he introduced neorealism. With his film “The Cow” from 1969, he won the audience award at the Venice Film Festival in 1971 and thus became internationally known in the scene.