Gholam-Hossein Saedi was an acclaimed Iranian author, playwright and screenwriter with an oeuvre that contains more than thirty publications.

Freedom And Other Maladies depicts Saedi's restless passion and heartbroken demise based on letters that he wrote over the years as well as interviews with his close friends and associates.

The documentary film focuses on the last four years of Saedi's life in Paris, at the peak of his suffering, painfully aware that he would die in exile.



Saedi was born on January 4, 1936 in Tabriz. He was a prolific Iranian writer. He published over forty books, representing his talents in the fiction genres of drama (under the pen name Gohar Morad or Gowhar Murad), the novel, the screenplay, and the short story in addition to the non-fiction genres of cultural criticism, travel literature and ethnography.

Many consider the screenplay for Gav ("The Cow"), Dariush Mehrjui's 1969 film, to be Saedi's magnum opus as it ushered in the New Wave Iranian cinema.

After the 1979 revolution and his subsequent exile, he maintained an important figure in the scene of Persian literature despite the Iranian diaspora of which he unwillingly became a part.

Till his death in Paris (November 23, 1985), due to depression and related alcoholism, he remained one of the most prominent and prolific of Iranian writers and intellectuals internationally.

For more detailed information about Saedi, his life and works, please visit Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation.