Prominent Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui stabbed to death

TEHRAN: One of Iran’s most prominent filmmakers, Dariush Mehrjui, was stabbed to death on Saturday evening alongside his wife at their home near Tehran.

A provincial chief justice said Mehrjui and his wife, Vahideh Mohammadifar, “were killed by multiple stab wounds to the neck”, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website said.

According to Hossein Fazeli-Harikandi, chief justice of Alborz province near Tehran, Mehrjui sent a text message to his daughter, Mona, at about 9:00pm local time (1730 GMT) inviting her for dinner at their home in Karaj, west of Tehran.

But upon her arrival an hour and a half later, she found the bodies of her dead parents with fatal wounds to their necks. Later in the day, police said “no signs of forced entry can be seen at the crime scene”, adding that “no damage has been done to the doors” of their home.

However, they said “traces have been found” at the scene they believe to be “related to the murderer”.

On Sunday, the Etemad newspaper included an interview with the filmmaker’s wife saying she had been threatened and that their home had been burgled.

“The investigation revealed that no complaints had been filed regarding the illegal entry into the Mehrjui’s family villa and the theft of their belongings”, said Fazeli-Harikandi. In a statement, Iran’s minister of culture, Mohammad-Mehdi Esmaili, hailed Mehrjui as “one of the pioneers of Iranian cinema” and “the creator of eternal works”. 

Born on December 8, 1939 in Tehran, Mehrjui studied philosophy in the United States before his return to Iran where he launched a literary magazine and released his first film in 1967, “Diamond 33”, a parody of the James Bond series.

The 83-year-old was indelibly associated with the Iranian new wave of cinema, with his 1969 film “The Cow” one of the movement’s first pictures. He then directed a string of well-regarded films including “Mr Gullible” (1970), “The Cycle” (1977) before leaving Iran in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Between 1980 and 1985, he lived in France where he worked on the documentary “Journey to the Land of Rimbaud” (1983).