Hossein Martin Fazeli
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Hossein Martin Fazeli is an Iranian-Canadian writer, director, and producer. He has created fiction and non-fiction films and television projects and has directed and produced in more than a dozen countries.
His films have been broadcast on CBC, BBC, ARTE, and Canal+, winning 45 international awards.[citation needed] He has collaborated with UNDP, European Commission, and Nonviolence International on film and television projects, including national and regional campaigns, exploring issues such as human rights, women’s rights, and minority rights.
His 2007 production "The Tale of Two Nazanins", which follows the case of a teenage girl on death row in Iran, was broadcast on BBC and CNN and is widely credited[by whom?] with sparking the international campaign that saved her life.
In 2008, Fazeli was chosen by the Sundance Institute to take part in their International Filmmakers Award. He has lectured and held workshops with students at SOAS (UK), Aarhus University & European Film Academy (Denmark), SFU (Canada), MIT (India) and Berlin School of Arts, Media and Entertainment (Germany).
Fazeli was born in Shiraz, Iran. In 1984 he was forced to leave the country, spending four years in self-exile in Dubai before emigrating to Canada to study film production at Concordia University and the Vancouver Film School. After completing his studies, he moved to Europe, where he wrote and directed a range of independent films. A committed advocate for human rights, Fazeli places issues of justice and dignity at the center of all his work, whether dramatic or documentary. His short film "Tricko" is part of the permanent collection of audiovisual works on tolerance at the Jewish Museum in Moscow, the largest Jewish museum in the world. He is currently completing three human-rights–focused films, including PHOOLAN, his docu-drama exploring the life and legacy of Phoolan Devi (India's Bandit Queen), an intensely iconic and polarizing figure in modern India.
Beyond filmmaking, Fazeli is also an accomplished poet and is considered one of the most influential—and often controversial—Persian writers in the diaspora. He has published six books of poetry in Persian under the pen name “Naanaam” («نانام»).[1][2][3]
