Bahman Farmanara was born on Jan.23,1942 in Tehran and is the second son in a family of four brothers and one sister. The family business was Textile and he was the only son who did not join the business and went off to United Kingdom and later on to US to study acting and directing. He graduated from University of Southern California with a BA in Cinema in 1966.After returning to Iran and doing military service, he joined the National Iranian Radio and Television and during his six years of work, he produced and anchored over 150 programs on current world cinema, directed two short documentaries and eventually he directed Prince Ehtjab his second feature film that won the Grand Prix for For The Best Film from 3rd International Tehran Film Festival 1974. This film was also shown at Cannes Directors Fortnight 1975 and was chosen of the top ten films of the year in International Film Guide 1976 Issues After this film, he accepted to be the Head of Film Division of  Film Industry Development Company Of  Iran. In three years that he was there he produced five feature films that included Desert of Tartars, By Valrio Zurlini, The crow, By Bahram Beyzaii, The Report by Abbas Kiarostami, The Divine One, By Khosrow Haritash, and The Chess Game By Mohamad Reza Aslani. After leaving FIDCI, he produced The Night Never Ends, the all time money maker in Iranian film history, and Tall Shadows Of The Wind which he also directed. The film was banned in Iran and was shown at Cannes’ Critics' Week section, but two years after the revolution the film was banned again and taken off the screens after a three day run.After this incident, he left Iran with his wife and three children for Canada. They arrived on Nov.1980 in Canada. Shortly after his arrival he proposed to the Ministry of Culture of British Columbia to start a film festival for films for children and young adults. In 1982 The Vancouver International Festival Of Films For Children And Young Adults opened and Bahman Farmanara was its Managing Director.During this time, he also established a film distribution company called Grosvenor Film Company. The first purchase of this company was Andrej Wajda’s “Man Of  Iron” which won the Palm D’OR at Canned Film Festival four days after the purchase, and eventually was nominated in Best Foreign Film category of Academy Awards.This success led to finding investors in Toronto to start another company called Spectra Film with offices in Toronto and New York, which was the first for a Canadian film company. Under the banner of this company, he distributed the first two films of Bille August, and the last film of  Francois Truffeut, called “Confidentianaly Yours.”  He also brought the Dutch directorfor Paul Verhofen his film The Fourth Man to US, and he eventually directed Basic Instinct.Because of the success of Spectra Film, he was asked to join Cineplex Odeon Cinema Chain and went to Los Angeles to set up a production and distribution division for the chain that had over 1800 cinemas in Canada and US.At Cineplex Odeon Films, he had the opportunity to works with film-makers like Oliver Stone (Talk Radio), Martin Scorcese (The Last Temptation Of Christ), John Schlisnger (Madame Souzatska), James Ivory (Mr and Mrs. Bridge), and Stephen Frears (The Grifters), Paul Newman (The Glass Menagerie), and John Hancock (Prancer).When Cinplex Odeon was taken over, he, who was one of the four Senior Executive Vice President of the company left the company along with other executives and started his own production company called Open City Entertainment, and co-produced the last film of the late Jean Claude Lauzon (Leolo). It was right after the shooting of this film that he returned to Iran to help his brother who had had a heart-attack to run the family textile company. Since the first ten years of his return, he was not allowed to make films; he devoted himself to teaching at Art University and running the textile company that he has been the CEO for the past eight years. The year 2000 was the year that he was allowed to make his first film in 20 years and thus he wrote, directed and played the lead in Smell Of Camphor Fragrance Of Jasmine, which won eight awards in Fajr International Film Festival, including the best film, best director and best screenplay. The film later on won Special Jury Prize at Montreal International Film Festival, and was also shown at New York Film Festival, which is one of the most prestigious festivals in the world since they only choose 24 films out of all films made in that year .In 2002 he wrote, produced and directed A House Built On Water, which also won five awards at Fajr International Film Festival, including the best film. The film ended up to be the most controversial film since the revolution and was banned twice and eventually was shown after being heavily censored. The latest film of Bahman Farmanara as writer-director is A Little Kiss which is not still released.