Mehrjui is an Iranian director, screenwriter, producer, editor and member of the Iranian New Wave. At the age of twenty he moved to the USA and began studying film at the Californian UCLA. There he met and attended Jean Renoir lecture but as he was unsatisfied with the studies’ structure he transferred to philosophy and graduated in 1964. He returned to his homeland and made his feature film debut with the James Bond parody Diamond 33 (Almaas 33) in 1966. His next film was Gaav (Cow) and it won an international award in 1971 after it was smuggled from Iran and presented at the Venice Film Festival. This film also marked the beginning of the New wave in Iranian film. In 1973, he directed The Cycle (Dayereh mina), but it was banned and shown publicly in 1977. Due to the inability to work in Iran he temporarily moved to California and returned to his homeland after the Iranian revolution. After he made his film The School We Went To (Hayate Poshti Madreseye Adl-e-Afagh, 1980) he moved to Paris for a few years and returned to Iran in 1985. In 1990 he made Hamoun, followed by Pari (1995), unauthorized adaptation of J. D. Salinger’s novel “Franny and Zooey”, Leila (1997), The Pear Tree (Derakht-e Golabi, 1998), Banoo (The Lady, 1999), To Stay Alive (Bemani, 2002), Mum's Guest (Mehman-e Maman, 2004) and Santoori (2007).