Maziar Bahari

"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 wrote a prison memoir and family history, Then They Came for Me. The book became a New York Times Best Seller and has been called "incredible" by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show who worked with Bahari on his film based on the book. Doug Saunders of The Globe and Mail called the book "Moving and, at times, very funny", and said that it "offers a number of lessons about the way Middle Eastern politics work." Leslie Scrivener of The Toronto Star explained "Then They Came for Me is a gripping story that weaves his family’s history of incarceration by Iranian rulers with his own." Mother Jones magazine wrote that "Then They Came for Me is not only a fascinating, human exploration into Bahari's personal experience but it also provides insight into the shared experience of those affected by repressive governments everywhere." Kirkus Reviews praised the book for "Providing an illuminating glimpse into the security apparatus of one of the world's most repressive countries. Especially timely given recent events throughout the Middle East, this book is recommended for anyone wishing to better understand the workings of a police state."

Bahari launched IranWire in 2014, "to empower Iranian citizen journalists by creating a forum in which young Iranians can discuss national and local news, providing training modules and putting Iranian citizen journalists inside the country in touch with professional Iranian journalists." Although the website is bilingual, only a fraction of the Persian articles appear in the English. IranWire works with a number of prominent Iranian journalists including Reza Haghighatnejad, Shima Shahrabi, Aida Ghajar, Ehsan Mehrabi and Masih Alinejad. It has a partnership with Daily Beast. IranWire's initial website was designed and developed by Small Media Foundation.

Upon the release of Ofcom's findings, Press TV launched a campaign against Bahari and Ofcom. Bahari was accused of being "an MI6 contact person". Press TV called Ofcom's ruling "part of an anti-Iranian campaign," and noted "A quick look at senior decision makers at Ofcom demonstrates that the regulator is mostly made up of former Channel 4 and BBC executives, some of whom are well-linked to and influenced by powerful pro-Israeli politicians." Press TV's failure to pay a £100,000 fine for showing Bahari's 'confession' was connected with the revocation of Press TV's licence to broadcast in the UK, via satellite, in January 2012.

After his release Bahari launched a complaint against Iranian government's English satellite channel, Press TV, for filming and airing an interview with him under duress. In May 2011, Ofcom upheld Bahari's three complaints against Press TV. In the summary Ofcom said Press TV's presentation of Bahari was unfair because it "omitted material facts and was placed in a context in which inferences adverse to Mr Bahari could be drawn". The media regulator also said that Press TV failed to get his consent and this "contributed to the overall unfairness to Mr Bahari in the item broadcast". Ofcom added that filming and broadcasting the interview without consent "while he was in a sensitive situation and vulnerable state was an unwarranted infringement of Mr Bahari's privacy".

On the morning of June 21, 2009, during the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, Bahari was arrested at his family's home in Tehran and taken to Evin Prison. In July, while incarcerated, he appeared in a televised confession (broadcast internationally by PressTV) telling his interviewer that Western journalists worked as spies; that he had covered "illegal demonstrations" and "illegal gatherings", and was helping promote a "colour revolution".

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.

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 1997 Bahari began reporting in Iran and making independent documentaries, and in 1998 he became Newsweek magazine's Iran correspondent.

He graduated with a degree in communications from Concordia University in Montreal in 1993, before continuing some additional studies at the nearby McGill University. 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 Cuba, the United States, and Canada, 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:

Bahari was born in Tehran, Iran, but moved to Pakistan in 1987 before he immigrated to Canada in 1988 to study communications. His family has been involved in dissident politics in Iran: his father was imprisoned by the Shah's regime in the 1950s, and his sister Maryam under the revolutionary government of Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s. She later died of leukemia. He is married to Paola Gourley, an Italian-English lawyer working in London, who gave birth to their first child in October 2009 shortly after his release from prison.

"You may feel safe in your modest house, protected by thousands of revolutionary guards. But beyond them the world is changing. Iran is changing. In 1978, as the shah was doing his best to stifle his people, Ayatollah Khomeini promised that 'in an Islamic Iran the media will have the freedom to express all Iran's realities and events.' Hoping they could realize that promise, Iranians rose up and overthrew the shah. Ayatollah Khamenei, those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it."

Maziar Bahari (Persian: مازیار بهاری ‎; born May 25, 1967) is an Iranian Canadian journalist, film maker and human rights activist. He was a reporter for Newsweek from 1998 to 2011. Bahari was incarcerated by the Iranian government from June 21, 2009 to October 17, 2009, and has written a New York Times best seller family memoir, Then They Came for Me. His memoir is the basis for Jon Stewart's 2014 film Rosewater. Bahari later founded the IranWire citizen journalism news site, the freedom of expression campaign Journalism Is Not A Crime and the street art and social justice project Paint the Change. He currently serves on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Task Force to Protect Minority Communities of Middle East.

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.