Bahman Ghobadi was born in 1969 in Baneh in the province of Iranian Kurdistan near the IranIraq border Shortly after graduating from the National Audiovisual School he made his first short immediately acclaimed by the local critics One of these short films Life in Fog 1999 is even considered as the most famous short ever made in Iran This success allowed Bahman Ghobadi to make several feature films the best known being his first A Time for Drunken Horses 2000 the first Kurd film in the history of Iran This film and all the the others made by Ghobadi were hits in the festival circuit garnered dozens of awards but were little seen or not seen at all in his native country His last movie to date filmed without official permit rapidly and feverishly No One Knows About Persian Cats 2009 is a remarkable semidocumentary about underground indie music in Tehran