Cyrus Nowrasteh

Cyrus Nowrasteh (Persian: سیروس/کوروش نورسته; ; born September 19, 1956) is an American-‌Iranian screenwriter, director, and producer of film and television. He has worked on numerous television series and made-for-TV movies including The Day Reagan Was Shot, Falcon Crest, Into the West, and the controversial docudrama The Path to 9/11. He has also directed the theatrical features The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009), The Young Messiah (2016), and Infidel (2020). Early life and education Nowrasteh was born on 19 September 1956, in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. He is of Iranian descent and graduated from Madison West High School in 1974 and was a city boys high school tennis champion. Nowrasteh attended New Mexico State University on an athletic scholarship and later transferred to the University of Southern California to attend the School of Cinematic Arts, graduating in 1977. Career In 1986, Nowrasteh began his career by writing for the CBS television series The Equalizer. He went on to work on Falcon Crest as a producer and story editor and wrote the pilot for the USA Network show La Femme Nikita (1996). He made his directorial debut with the Veiled Threat, a 1989 independent film based on the real-life murder of an Iranian journalist living in Orange County. The film was pulled from the AFI Film Festival after organizers received bomb threats, allegedly due to the film's criticism of anti-Khomeni themes. Nowrasteh subsequently accused the AFI of buckling to "censorship" and claimed their pulling the film "killed" its chances at distribution. He also worked on independent films such as the American/Brazilian production The Interview (1995), which played at Sundance and on the Showtime network; and Norma Jean, Jack and Me (1998).