Sohrab Shahid Saless was born in Tehran and studied film in Vienna and Paris. After returning to Iran, he first worked for the Ministry of Arts and Culture, where he made 22 films. In 1976, he left Iran for Germany, where he worked as a filmmaker until 1991, then moving to Chicago where he died in 1998. In his first feature, the milestone film “A Simple Event” (1973), he describes the everyday life of a ten-year-old boy living in a small town with an ill mother and a father struggling to make a living smuggling fish. In contrast, “Still Life” (1974) explores the monotony in the life of an old railway switchman – a film that won many prizes, including one at the 1974 Berlinale. Other films by Saless include “Far from Home”, “Diary of a Lover”, “Coming of Age”, and “Utopia”. He died in 1998.