Prominent Iranian film and theater writer-director Bahram Beyzaie died in the U.S. on Friday due to complications from cancer, according to independent journalist Mansour Jahani. Beyzaie was 87 and died on his birthday.

Beyzaie’s 1985 film, Bashu, the Little Stranger was screened at the 2025 Venice Film Festival and received the Venice Classics award for best restored film.

Fellow Iranian director Asghar Farhadi called Beyzaie his “great teacher” in a tribute message.

“Bahram Beyzaie, my great teacher, whose works, words, and above all, his love for the culture of this land I have followed with all my heart, has now left this world in exile,” Farhadi wrote. “I have truly never known a more Iranian person than Bahram Beyzaie in this day and age, and how bitter it is that this most Iranian of Iranians, thousands of miles away from Iran, turns a blind eye to the world.”

Bahram Beyzaie was born on Dec. 26, 1938 in Tehran, Iran and grew up in a family of poets and literary scholars. In addition to directing 10 feature films, four short films and 14 staged plays, Beyzaie wrote more than 70 books, monographs, plays and screenplays.

Considered one of the leaders of Iranian New Wave cinema, Beyzaie’s award-winning films, screened at festivals around the world, in addition to Bashu, include Downpour (1972) and Killing Rabids (2001).

His work was inspired by Indo-Iranian mythology and history and drew on the study of ancient Iranian literature and languages. He reconstructed indigenous forms of Iranian theater in his own film and stage projects.

His first play, Arash, written when he was 19, was a response to Siavash Kasraei’s Arash the Archer. He wrote scholarly works that examined the origins of One Thousand and One Nights and its connection with other significant works in Persian literature. And his monographs and essays explore Indian, Chinese and Japanese performing art traditions.

His 1965 book Theatre in Iran provided a comprehensive study of the historical roots of Iranian theatrical genres like Naqali (Iranian storytelling), Kheimeh Shab Bazi (Iranian puppetry), Ta’zieh (passion plays) and Ruhowzi (comic folk drama).

Beyzaie was a founding member of the Center for Progressive Filmmakers in Iran, the Iranian Writers Association and The Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers, serving as the University of Tehran’s chair of the dramatic arts department. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Beyzaie was forced to resign from Tehran University and his work was censored or banned by the government. He left Iran in 2010 and joined Stanford as a lecturer in Iranian studies, where he also staged several plays and conducted workshops on Iranian mythology.

Beyzaie was a member of the Film Academy and had been invited to join the Oscars voting body in 2024.