Career
He graduated with a degree in communications from Concordia University in Montreal. Soon after, Bahari made his first film, The Voyage of the Saint Louis, about the attempt by 937 German Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany on that ship in 1939, who were turned away by both Cuba and the United States and ultimately forced to return to the Third Reich. In producing the film, Bahari became the first Muslim to make a film about the Holocaust. When asked what motivated him to make the film, he cited the courses he took at Concordia, where he:
studied the modern history of the Jews and I was fascinated by the history of the Jews in North America. I took a course on Freud and religion and the professor talked a lot about early 20th century anti-Semitism in the U.S. and Canada. I had no idea that even up until the 1950s Jews were discriminated against in North America, so I wanted to explore that further. As an immigrant, I was interested in the history of Jewish immigration from Europe to America. So I looked for a story to combine all these elements and came across the story of the St. Louis.
Later, while he was imprisoned in Iran the film "haunted" him, with his interrogators accusing him of being on a mission to work for Zionists.
In 1997 Bahari began reporting in Iran and making independent documentaries, and in 1998 he became Newsweek magazine's Iran correspondent.
He has produced a number of other documentaries and news reports for Channel 4, BBC and other broadcasters around the world on subjects as varied as private lives of Ayatollahs, African architecture, Iranians' passion for football and contemporary history of Iran. In 2003, Harvard Film Archive praised Bahari's work:
"In a country known for neorealist fiction films that focus on small events in the lives of individuals, the work of Iranian director Maziar Bahari is somewhat anomalous. Employing a traditional documentary style to explore more far-reaching cultural events, Bahari’s films provide a glimpse inside contemporary Iranian culture as they reveal the human element behind the headlines and capture cultural truths through the lens of individual experience. Representing a new generation of young Iranian filmmakers, Bahari’s trenchant looks at social issues in his country have brought both controversy and international acclaim."
Bahari's films have won several awards and nominations including an Emmy in 2005. A retrospective of Bahari's films was organized in November 2007 by the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. In September 2009, Bahari was nominated by Desmond Tutu for the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, widely known as Spain's Nobel Prize.
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