The San Francisco International Film Festival (April 19–May 3) is delighted to announce a new chapter in its series, The Unvanquished, which honors film artists whose careers have been aborted or interrupted for political reasons. This year the Festival pays special tribute to Behrouz Vossoughi, for nearly two decades one of the top actors in Iranian cinema, but virtually unknown in this country since coming here after the Islamic Revolution.. Screenings of two famed movies starring Vossoughi, TANGSIR and DASH AKOL will provide the unique opportunity for Festival audiences to see some of this distinguished actor’s best work.

Prior to leaving Iran, Behrouz Vossoughi was the most celebrated and admired actor in the nation, with more than 90 films and plays to his credit. Popular with both the public and the royal family, Vossoughi, and the era that he represented, was reviled by the new revolutionary government which came to power in 1979. Despite his skill as an actor, his career in the U.S. has been hindered by the political tension between the U.S. and Iran.  Since arriving here, he has been cast only in occasional small roles in American films and TV series. However, returning to Iran, as many of Vossoughi’s peers did, would have meant an end to his acting career. His ex-wife, the pop diva Googoosh, was kept silent and isolated in Iran for 22 years. Last year, Abbas Kiarostami, in San Francisco to receive the Festival’s Akira Kurosawa Award for lifetime achievement by a director, called Mr. Vossoughi up onstage moments after receiving his award, and paid an unforgettably moving tribute to him by giving the astonished actor the trophy he’d just received.

Born in 1938 in Khoi, a small town in the Iranian province of Azerbaijan, Vossoughi gained some valuable experience in film dubbing and on stage before tackling his first film role in the 1960s. In 1970, Massoud Kimiaie’s innovative art film GHAISAR, made Vossoughi a star. He went on to collaborate with Kimiaie on five more films including 1971’s DASH AKOL, adapted from an important work of contemporary Persian literature by Sadegh Hedayat. Vossoughi’s most acclaimed performance as Zar Mohamad, a peasant seeking justice, in TANGSIR occurred in 1975. This compelling epic, directed by Amir Naderi, was loosely adapted from another well-known Persian novel by Sadegh Chubak.

Passionate and adept, Vossoughi was a prominent individual in the new Iranian cinema through the 60’s and 70’s, playing everything from tough guys in mainstream movies to challenging characters in art films. Impervious to the discrimination he has encountered, Vossoughi recently starred in an independent Dutch production, THE CROSSING, as, appropriately enough, an Afghani calligrapher living in exile. 

The Unvanquished series was introduced at the 1996 San Francisco International Film Festival, and saluted three filmmakers, Abraham Polonsky, Paul Meyer and Paul Carpita. Polonsky had been blacklisted in 1948 after directing the noir masterpiece FORCE OF EVIL, and was unable to make another film for over twenty years. Meyer was sued by the Belgian government for “misuse of government funds” for his moving depiction of the plight of Italian coal miners in FROM THE BRANCHES DROPS THE WITHERED BLOSSOM, made in 1960. The screening of the film at the Festival in 1996 was the first time it had been presented in the U.S. Carpita’s RENDEZVOUS ON THE DOCKS was banned by the French government in 1955 and was long believed destroyed, but a copy was found in 1988 and presented at the Festival in 1991. In 1998 The Unvanquished honored film director John Berry (HE RAN ALL THE WAY), who continued his career in France after being blacklisted in Hollywood and in 1999, blacklisted actress and activist Karen Morley (SCARFACE) was honored. The Festival is honored to continue THE UNVANQUISHED series by honoring Behrouz Vossoughi this year.