Daryoush Mehrjui and his wife, Vahideh Mohammadifar, were found stabbed to death on 14 October 2023, in their villa in Meshkin Dasht, Karaj. Neither the identity of the perpetrators nor their motives have been disclosed, and further details are not available. Prior to this incident, Vahideh had posted on her social media page about anonymous personal threats, including threats from a non-Iranian individual with a knife. On October 17 Iranian police arrested ten individuals suspected of being involved in the murders, including "the main killer."

Their funeral was held at Roudaki Performance Hall in Tehran, with tributes from Jafar Panahi, Masoud Kimiai, Mohammad Rasoulof and Bahman Farmanara.

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Mehrjui switched his major to philosophy and graduated from UCLA in 1964. Returning to Iran in 1965, he almost immediately embarked on a filmmaking career.

“The greatest privilege we have as human beings is the ability to say no.”

He made his debut in 1966 with Diamond 33. His second featured film, The Cow (1969), brought him national and international recognition.

The Cow (1969), a compelling symbolic drama, is about a simple villager and his nearly mythical attachment to his cow. The story of the film was from renowned Iranian literary figure Gholamhossein Sa’edi.

In 1971, the film was smuggled out of Iran and submitted to the Venice Film Festival, where, without programming or subtitles, it became the largest event of that year’s festival.

The film was a turning point in the history of Iranian cinema. The public received it with great enthusiasm, despite the fact that it had ignored all the traditional elements of box office attraction. In 1973 Mehrjui began directing what was to be his most acclaimed film.

The Cycle (1976) was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Culture but encountered opposition from the Iranian medical establishment and was banned from release until 1977.

It was universally admired abroad. The film won the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique Prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 1978.

In 1981, he traveled to Paris and remained there for several years, during which time he made a feature-length semi-documentary for French TV, Voyage au Pays de Rimbaud (1983).

Feeling homesick, he returned to Iran to film The Tenants (1986), a comedy of conflict between apartment tenants and a realtor seeking to throw them out.

In Hamoun (1989), a portrait of an intellectual whose life is falling apart, Mehrjui sought to depict his generation’s post-revolutionary turn from politics to mysticism. The ‘90s also found Mehrjui releasing films dealing with women’s issues.

Banoo (1991, released in 1998) more or less brought Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana (1961) to Iran.

Sara (1993) did the same for Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

Pari (1995), a transplanting of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, attracted the attention – and the threat of a lawsuit – from the reclusive author.

Leila (1996) was all Mehrjui’s own and the first to receive any sort of wide theatrical release in the West. The story of a marriage undone by infertility and a meddling mother-in-law, it earned Mehrjui raves.

Outside of festivals and a career-spanning retrospective by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in late 1998, his films remain largely unseen outside Iran, an oversight that will hopefully be corrected with the passing of time.

2022 'Kill me' speech

In March 2022, Mehrjui publicly denounced the state censorship. In front of a filled cinema crowd, Mehrjui announced,

 “listen to me, I can’t take it anymore,” he said. “I want to fight [back]. Kill me, do whatever you want with me…destroy me, but I want my right.”

Daryoush Mehrjui and his wife, Vahideh Mohammadifar, were found stabbed to death on 14 October 2023, in their villa in Meshkin Dasht, Karaj. Neither the identity of the perpetrators nor their motives have been disclosed, and further details are not available. Prior to this incident, Vahideh had posted on her social media page about anonymous personal threats, including threats from a non-Iranian individual with a knife. On October 17 Iranian police arrested ten individuals suspected of being involved in the murders, including "the main killer."

Their funeral was held at Roudaki Performance Hall in Tehran, with tributes from Jafar Panahi, Masoud Kimiai, Mohammad Rasoulof and Bahman Farmanara.