Arsalan Baraheni

Arsalan Baraheni is a Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal, Los Angeles and Toronto. He is the founder of Baraheni Films, a production and distribution company based in Canada and U.S. Arsalan was born in a Persian Turk Family from Tabriz. His father is a legendary poet who was exiled decades ago from Iran. He was also a professor at the University of Toronto and the president of Pen Canada. Arsalan grew up in a very well known, intellectual, artistic, and political family and in an environment filled with poetry, films, literature, arts, human rights, and political matters related to Iran. Arsalan shot his first independent films more than 2 decades ago in his late teenage years in high school. The most well known documentary of Arsalan premiered in 2014 in BBC and his documentary films are very well known in the middle east because of their social, political and poetic languages. The Exilic Trilogy features three of his documentary films in black and white which had millions of views on world satellites in the Persian, Turkish and Kurdish communities. Actors of God is an independent feature which premiered at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, New York Film Anthology, Cinema Du Parc of Montreal and various film festivals. The documentaries of Arsalan have premiered theatrically in various cities at independent cinemas, festivals, art centers, galleries and some of the most important universities in the U.S. and Canada.