Bahrām Beyzāêi (also spelt Beizāi, Beyzāêi, Beyzāee, Persian: بهرام بیضائی; born 26 December 1938) is an Iranian playwright, theatre director, screenwriter, film editor, and ostād ("master") of Persian letters, arts and Iranian studies.

[4] Despite his belated start in cinema, Beyzai is often considered a pioneer of a generation of filmmakers whose works are sometimes described as the Iranian New Wave.

Bahram Beizai started skipping school from around the age of 17 in order to go to movies which were becoming popular in Iran at a rapid pace.

[8] The young Bahram did not seem very interested in his family legacy, poetry, which was pursued by his father, uncles and cousins.

In 1968, Beyzai was one of the nine founders of the Iranian Writers' Guild, a highly controversial organization in the face of censorship.

Death of Yazdgerd has been performed in Iran, France, England, India and the USA, among other countries, and was made into a film of the same name by Beyzai in 1981.

With these films, Beyzai is often considered to be a pioneer of the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that was started in the late 1960s.

In 2001, he made his best-selling film Killing Mad Dogs, after which he managed to stage three plays before he left Iran for the United States.

He left Iran in 2010 at the invitation of Stanford University, and has since been the Daryabari Visiting Professor of Iranian Studies, teaching courses in Persian theatre, cinema and mythology.

Bayzaie never received the support he deserved from the government of his home country...[11] Some people in our old and enduring culture assume iconic significance for reasons far beyond our crooked measures.

The main theme of his works is the history and "crisis of identity," which is related to Iranian cultural and mythical symbols and paradigms.

He is considered Iran's most prominent screenwriter in terms of the dramatic integrity of his works, many of which have been made into films.