The late Bahram Beyzaie is a part of all of us. We have lived with his stories, plays, and films—from Uncle Moustache (Amu Sabilo) to When We Are All Asleep (Vaghti Hame Khabim).
For any filmmaker anywhere in this galaxy, a single masterpiece like Bashu, the Little Stranger (Bashu, Gharibeh-ye Koochak) would be enough to take pride in a lifetime of cinema.
In that film, Beyzaie—much like Hafez, whose enduring ghazals contain the full imprint of their age—created a timeless work about all the wars of the world: a film that recounts the anguish of displacement and celebrates the grandeur of human solidarity. Like Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock, Bashu is a film one can watch again and again, each time still longing for the wonder of a renewed encounter.
He was a magician who bewitched us with images. Do you remember your astonishing journey in The Travelers (Mosaferan)?
Did Beyzaie not cast a spell on you—taking you deep into centuries past with the astonishing legend of The Death of Yazdgerd (Marg-e Yazdgerd)? Did you not fall in love with The Ballad of Tara (Cherike-ye Tara)?
And what a gift life gave me: to have conversed with him in those years. What a dream those days were—when he would pick me up along his way from the office I shared with Master Noureddin Zarrinkelk, and—if I remember correctly—seat me in his Citroën Dyane, whistling song after song the entire drive, with the ease of a true maestro.
And how cruelly this great man was made a stranger in his homeland—he who knew it, loved it, with every single cell of his being. And what exile did to him…
