Aged 83, the filmmaker directed The Cow in 1969, one of the first films of the new wave of Iranian cinema.
“During the preliminary investigation, we found that Dariush Mehrjui and his wife, Vahideh Mohammadifar, had been killed by multiple stab wounds to the neck,” announced the head of justice of Alborz province, close to from Tehran, Hossein Fazeli-Harikandi, cited by the justice agency Mizan Online.
In an interview published on Sunday by the newspaper Etemad, the filmmaker’s wife announced that she had recently been threatened by an individual and that their home had been burglarized.
“The investigation showed that no complaint had been filed regarding the illegal entry into the Mehrjoui family villa and the theft of their property,” added Mr. Fazeli-Harikandi.
Dariush Mehrjui notably directed The Cow (1969), Monsieur le naif (1970), The Cycle (1974), The Tenants (1987), Hamoun (1990), Sara (1993), Pari (1995) and Leila (1996). These films were screened in 2014, by the Forum des Images in Paris, during a tribute in his presence.
Between 1980 and 1985, the filmmaker stayed in France where he directed Le Voyage au pays de Rimbaud.
Back in Iran, he triumphed at the box office with The Tenants. In 1990, he signed Hamoun, a black comedy about the 24 hours in the life of an intellectual anguished by his divorce and his intellectual concerns, in an Iran invaded by the technology companies Sony and Toshiba.
In the 1990s, Dariush Mehrjui also painted portraits of women, including Sara, Pari and Leila, a melodrama about a barren woman who encourages her husband to marry a second wife.