Ghasem Ebrahimian ’79

Ghasem Ebrahimian ’79 is an Iranian-born filmmaker and a director of photography.

Ebrahimian formed Ebrafilms with Coleen Higgins ’77 (sociology) in 1980, and the company produced over forty documentaries for Italian and French televisions, among other commercial productions.

As cinematographer on the feature film Amerikatsi (2022), he earned the award for Best Cinematography at the Woodstock Film Festival in 2022.

He was also the cinematographer on 2021’s Land of Dreams, the English language debut by Iranian-born filmmakers and visual artists Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari.

He began collaborating with Shirin Neshat in 1997 on a number of filmed video installations as director of photography and co-writer. Their first collaboration, Turbulent, won the first international prize at the 1999 Venice Biennale. The following installations: Rapture (1999), Soliloquy (1999), Possessed (2009), Fervor(2000), Pulse (2001), and Mahdokht (2004) have been shown in museums and galleries around the world.

Ebrahimian wrote and directed the feature film The Suitors, an official selection for Cannes Film Festival in 1988, and was nominated for Camera d’OR. The Suitors was theatrically released in the US and was shown on Germany’s WDR and UK’s Channel 4.

His film, The Sacred, The Absurd, about the last day in the life of celebrated Iranian writer, Sadegh Hedayat, premiered at Victoria and Albert Museum in London and was nominated for Best Short Film at Tribeca Film Festival in 2005.

Ebrahimian’s feature screenplay writing credits include Tranquility in the Presence of Others, A Soldier of Misfortune with Hubert Selby Jr. (author of Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream), Absolute Faith, based on his story, which he co-wrote with Donald E. Westlake.