Iranian Director Dariush Mehrjui, Wife Stabbed To Death In Their Home

Iran's prominent filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui, was stabbed to death on Saturday evening alongside his wife at their home near Tehran.

The official IRNA news agency quoted Hossein Fazeli, a judiciary official, stating that Mehrjhi and his wife, Vahideh Mohammadifar, were discovered dead with knife wounds in their necks.

Fazeli said the director’s daughter, Mona Mehrjui, found the bodies when she went to visit her father Saturday night at the home in a suburb about 30 kilometres (19 miles) west of the capital, Tehran.

Mohammadifar, a screenwriter and costume designer, had reportedly complained recently that she had been threatened and that the house had been burgled.

Noted Iranian Director Dariush Mehrjui, wife found dead

In a statement, Iran's minister of culture, Mohammad-Mehdi Esmaili, hailed Dariush Mehrjui as "one of the pioneers of Iranian cinema" and "the creator of eternal works".

Born on December 8, 1939 in Tehran, Dariush 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 credited as one of the founders of the Iranian new wave of cinema. He rose to international prominence with his 1969 film The Cow, which tells the story of a villager's obsession with the titular animal.

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

Throughout the 1990s, Dariush Mehrjui also depicted the lives of women in Sara (1993), Pari (1995) and Leila (1997), a melodrama about an infertile woman who encourages her husband to marry a second woman.

Mehrjui received many awards throughout his career, including a Silver Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival in 1998 and a Golden Seashell at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in 1993.

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