Born in Babol in 1947, Ebrahim Mokhtari ( ابراهیم مختاری ) is a graduate of filmmaking from Tehran’s College of Film & Television and Universite de Paris-VIII 1980 in Etudes Cinematographiques et Audio-visuelles. He started his career at the Iranian television as assistant director of series. He began making documentaries for the Iranian TV stations and established himself as one of the prominent documentary filmmakers in the country. He made his first feature film, Zinat, in 1994, which was successfully shown at the Critics Week Section of Cannes 1994. Leipzig Film Festival held a tribute to Ebrahim Mokhtari in 1997 and Rural Art & Literature Festival of Tehran presented him with a Special Prize for his film career in 1999. Ebrahim Mokhtari is the founder and was one of the members of the founding board of Iranian Documentary Filmmaker’s Association in 1998.”

In 1990, I was making a documentary on the cultivation of saffron, and I tried to portray the cultivation process of this plant through the people of Khorasan. When making the film, I had demands for the arrangement of each scene, some of which were opposed by the farmers, until they stopped filming. However, the film was finished, but it was clear to me that the reason for our struggle was a perception of the world that was different from my understanding. 0It was so meaningful that I could not forget it, until I wrote and made the script, “The Leaf of Life.”