Mohammad Hossein Mahdavian (born 12 May 1981) is an Iranian film director and screenwriter.

He's best known for his films Standing in the Dust (2016), Midday Adventures (2017), Lottery (2018), Walnut Tree (2020) and Mortal Wound (2021).

He won both Best Film and Audience Choice of Best Film for making the film Midday Adventures, making it one of only five films in The history of cinema of Iran to win the latter. (the other four are The Glass Agency, Low Heights, In Amethyst Color and Crazy Rook).

He graduated from Soore University with a Bachelor of Film and Television in Directing and a master's degree in production from the Iran Broadcasting University.

"My goal has always been to create national empathy, and I feel that the only thing that can save us today is empathy. Not to say that I am a very extremist nationalist. Not like that, but I have a deep feeling of patriotism inside me. You can go back and see my films from the beginning until today, my problem is Iran and this issue has never changed."

Mahdavian received critical acclaim for making the film Standing in the Dust, he won the Crystal Simorgh for Best Film and received an nomination for Crystal Simorgh for Best Director in 2016 at the 34th Fajr Film Festival.

in 2017 he won the Crystal Simorgh for Best Film and the Crystal Simorgh for Audience Choice of Best Film for Midday Adventures. When he received this award (Crystal Simorgh for Audience Choice of Best Film), he called it the most important award of the festival.

He won the Crystal Simorgh for Best Director at the 38th Fajr Film Festival for making the film Walnut Tree. This film is about war it is about the ugliness of war the consequences of unconvee weapons.

One of the main tools used by Mahdavians to represent a documentary is the use of a hand-held camera in filming, which creates the illusion of more reality for the viewer. A technique that is, of course, used in many especially social films of Iranian cinema. But the visual quality and texture of the image that Mahdavian creates is not similar to the scenes on social films.

In the first place, it uses the Negative to add a nostalgic aspect to the films, which is in harmony with the story and the theme of the film. That is, the choice of whether to shoot a negative or digital film is directly related to the story. In "Standing in the Dust" or "Midday Adventures" and "Midday Adventures: Trace of Blood", a 16mm negative camera has been used to bring the film closer to its narrative since the 1960s. Digital cameras have been rebuilt and in "Walnut Tree" in each period of the film, i.e. the 60s, 80s and 90s, in order to remain faithful to the visual index texture in each decade, 16mm, 35mm and digital cameras, respectively, have been used. They have their own visual phase.

In addition, the camera movements are not like other social films, it has sloppiness and pus, which again emphasizes the documentary aspect. Of course, this does not mean that the director's design is not accurate, that exactly all the elements in front of the camera are placed in such a way that they look slutty and "unplaced". In Mahdavian's works, the camera serves to document and bring the viewer closer to the date and time in which the story of the film takes place.

Filmography

Feature films


2016     Standing in the Dust
2017     Midday Adventures
2018     Lottery
2019     Midday Adventures: Trace of Blood
2020     Walnut Tree
2021     Shishlik
2021     Mortal Wound
2022     The Loser Man