Rafi Pitts

Rafi Pitts (Persian: رفیع پیتز‎‎) (born 1967) is an Iranian film director.

Life and career

Pitts was born in Mashad, Iran. Rafi spent his childhood in Tehran, where he lived in a basement flat underneath a post-production studio. He describes himself as having been a 'very bad' child actor, starting in films at the age of eight. He came to England (his father is English) in 1981 during the Iran Iraq war. He graduated in 1991 from the Polytechnic of Central London with a BA (Hons) degree in Film and Photography. His first short film, In Exile (1991) was presented the same year at the London International Film Festival. In the 90's Pitts moved to Paris and worked on films by Leos Carax, Jacques Doillon and Jean-Luc Godard.

Educated in France and England, Rafi Pitts belongs to the new wave of Iranian cinema, which received numerous prestigious prizes in the international festival circuit.

In 1996 he had the opportunity to film in Iran and describes himself as having been the first film director (in exile) to do so since the Revolution in 1979. His first feature Season Five (1997) was the first Franco-Iranian coproduction since the Revolution.