Farrukh Ghaffārī (25 February 1921 – 17 December 2006) was an Iranian film director, actor, critic, and author, who, along with Ibrāhīm Gulistān and Farīdūn Rahnamā, played an important role in the establishment of Iranian intellectual and unconventional cinema in the early 1940s (notably founding Iran’s New Wave film movement). Ghaffarī injected new blood into the lifeless body of Iranian cinema by making films about the south of the city, Junūb-i shahr (South of the City) and Shab-i qūzī (Night of the Hunchback), akin to films such as Khisht va āyinah (The Brick and Mirror) by Ibrāhīm Gulistān and Siyāvash in Persepolis by Farīdūn Rahnamā, thereby furthering the growth and evolution of Iranian art cinema. 

Ghaffārī graduated in French literature from the University of Grenoble in France (1945) and started his artistic career by acting in theatre in France. He became known to Henri Langlois, the founder of the Paris cinémathéque, through his writing of articles for the Dauphiné newspaper, the Variétés journal and the magazine Positif. Years later, Ghaffārī himself founded the National Iranian Film Archive in Tehran. 

Ghaffārī, whose artistic and film credentials include a history of filmmaking and cultural management in radio and television in the years before the Iranian Revolution, was a forerunner of criticism and historiography in Iranian cinema. Although a pioneer of a highly different and modern cinema in Iran leading up to the Revolution, Ghaffārī’s name and works have been largely—and unfortunately—neglected.