Parvīz Kīmiyāvī is a director, screenwriter, and editor. Born in Tehran, Kīmiyāvī studied filmmaking at the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière and the Institut des hautes études cinématographique (IDHEC) in France. He then started his career in the field of filmmaking as an assistant director with the French public TV channel ORTF, and thus experienced the making of his first short film titled Iranian Saint Joan in France. He returned to Iran in 1968 and in cooperation with the Iranian TV, he started making short films, which are mostly in the genres of experimental cinema and docudrama. 

With a background in filmmaking, Kīmiyāvī is regarded as a prominent member of Iranian New Wave cinema directors and producers alike and is an influential figure of twentieth-century Iranian cinema. He has directed a total of eighteen films, with some of his most notable including works like P mis̱l-i pilīkān (P Like Pelican; 1972), Mughulʹhā (Mongols; 1973), and Bāgh-i sangī (The Garden of Stones; 1976). In 1976, Kīmiyāvī’s Bāgh-i sangī was declared winner of the Silver Bear at the 26th Berlin International Film Festival, where it was lauded for its directorial approach and the film’s avant-garde form, which integrates fictional techniques into documentary-style formatting. This format employed by Kīmiyāvī in his works interplays between the documented and fictional realities of his films, giving his oeuvre an auteur quality.