Iranian film director and writer Oktay BARAHENI (1974, Iran) holds a degree in Cinema from York University Toronto, Canada. His father was well-known Iranian writer and intellectual Reza Baraheni. Oktay Baraheni started his cinema career by writing about film and cinema theory in Iranian most well-known Iranian film magazines and newspapers. He also wrote and directed several short films and documentaries. His short films “The Couch” and “Groom‘s Birthday” are well-known short films among Iranian cinema followers. Also, the short film “Limbo” directed by Ghasideh Golmakani based on Baraheni ‘s script won so many prizes at film festivals around the world.  He made a documentary about the Iranian linguistic-poetic movement in the 90s which has been broadcast many times by TV channels like BBC.  His “debut feature, Bridge of Sleep (2016), drew inspiration from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the film presented at the 34th Fajr Film Festival among Iranian first-time directors. The movie got the nomination for Best Talented Filmmakers of the New Generation by the board of Iranian film critics. After the film’s release in theatres in Iran in 2017, Baraheni ‘s script writing skills which come from a deep family background in literature moved some of the other directors of his generation. Ebrahim Irajzad made his second feature “Killer Spider” (2020) based on a script written by Baraheni, which was an adaptation of the true events of the Iranian so-called serial killer, Saeed Hanaie, who killed 16 sex workers in the city of Mashhad, north of Iran, in1990.  The movie got attention at Busan International Film Festival. The movie Latyan 2021 directed by Iranian young filmmaker Ali Teymouri is also based on another script by Baraheni in the same year. All of these scripts shared a mutual theme which was crucial in all of Baraheni’s work, no matter in his scripts written for the other directors or in the movies made by himself, there is always a concept with emphasis on criminal motivation and violent behaviour of a subject, and this key concept is located at the centre of his idea about movies.  In 2024, Oktay Baraheni made his second feature film, The Old Bachelor, which is also inspired by The “Brothers Karamazov” and “Idiot” by Dostoevsky. The Old Bachelor drew the critiques and juries’ attention during its premiere at 2024 IFFR while it won the best film from the Big Screen Competition there. His sophomore feature “The Old Bachelor” channels the dark soul of Shakespeare’s family tragedies like Hamlet and Othello.