The Day of the Incident

Bahram Beyzai is a playwright, theater director, screenwriter, film editor, and professor of literature, art, and Iranian studies. Beyzai is the son of Ne’matollah Beyzai, a poet known mostly by his literary pseudonym ‘Zukhai’. The renowned poet Adib Beyzai, considered one of the deepest poets of 20th century Iran, is Bahram’s paternal uncle. Bahram Beyzai’s paternal grandfather, Mirza Mohammad Reza Arani (‘Ibn-e-Ruh’), and great-grandfather, Molla Mohammad Faqih Arani (‘Ruh Al-Amin’), were also prominent poets. Despite a somewhat late start in cinema, Beyzai is often regarded as a pioneer of a generation of filmmakers whose works are sometimes called the Iranian New Wave. His film ‘Bashu, the Little Stranger’ (1986) was named “the best Iranian film of all time” in November 1999 by Film Magazine Picture World, based on the opinion of 150 Iranian critics and experts. However, even before beginning his cinematic work in 1970, he was an outstanding playwright (and also a theater historian), frequently considered the greatest playwright in the Persian language and referred to as ‘Shakespeare’. Since 2010, Beyzai has lived and taught at Stanford University in the United States.