Bahman Ghobadi was born on February 1st, 1969 in Baneh, a city near the Iran- Iraq border in the province of Kurdistan, Iran. He was the first son in a family of seven siblings. He lived in Baneh until, at the age of 12, civil disputes caused his entire family to immigrate to Sanandaj, the centre of Kurdistan Providence in Iran. After graduating from high school in Sanandaj, Ghobadi moved to Tehran in 1992. He started his artistic career in the field of Industrial Photography. Though he attended the Iranian Broadcasting College, he never graduated. Rather than following a formal curriculum, he believed the only way he could learn the craft of cinema was by tirelessly making short films. Using 8mm film, his starting point was to shoot a series of short documentaries.
Though his instinctive and hands-on approach to filmmaking, Ghobadi developed a unique style, soon gaining widespread local recognition. A breakthrough came with Life in a Fog (1999). Following this Ghobadi went to make A Time for Drunken Horses (2000) – The first feature-length Kurdish film in the history of Iran. This film and all subsequent made Ghobadi – among others, Half Moon (2004), Turtles Can Fly (2006) and No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009) – were widely praised at film festivals the world over, gathering dozens of awards, but were little or not seen in his native country.
He has since had to leave Iran and continue working abroad.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and emerging. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.
