Mostafa Heravi (; born in 1974 in Mashhad, Iran) is an Iranian filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist currently residing in Netherlands.
Early life
Mostafa Heravi was born in 1974 in Mashhad, Iran. He was raised in a conservative, religious family who, from early childhood, encouraged him to take up drawing, reciting the Quran and calligraphy. Heravi pursued painting in the presence of several master artists, including Hossein Talebi and Amir Khajehamiri.
Career
Music videos
Since childhood, the first thing he was willing to pursue was music, but he could never do so due to living conditions. Therefore, he started his artistic career by painting. While living in Mashhad, he and his friend ran a hair salon to pursue painting. He then moved to Tehran to try theater and also photography. Still, he never took any of them seriously until he entered the university and chose cinema and film-making as his main career.
He received a degree in Audiovisual art from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie of Amsterdam. From 2006 to 2010, Heravi worked at the Radio Zamaneh studios. He now works as a filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist in Amsterdam. Heravi is known for his critical social approach.
In 2009, he started to make music videos, the first of which was for exiled, avant-garde Iranian singer Mohsen Namjoo named "Gladiators" that no media outlet would play because of its content. Apart from his collaboration with Namjoo, Heravi has also made music videos for Shahin Najafi; another Iranian singer, singer, songwriter and political activist who is strongly hated by Iranian regime.
In 2011, he produced a music video for rock band khak named "Tanham Nazar" (Don't Leave Me Alone). Mostafa Heravi is director of photography of the 2012 "Kiosk: A Generation Destroyed by Madness". It's a music documentary written and directed by Ala Mohseni which is a review of forty-something-year of Iran's history after Islamic revolution along with the Kiosk band tours. Heravi's first collaboration with Kiosk was in 2008 in which he made the official music video for their version of Ay from bia (Persian: ای یارم بیا) which features Mohsen Namjoo as guest singer. Some shots accompany it from the surrealistic movie The Color of Pomegranates by Armenian director Sergei Paradjanov.
He also directed "Bedrood" (Farewell) in 2016, a song by the Amsterdam-based band, Panida. In 2017, Mostafa Heravi directed a music video for Omid Noori, pioneer of opera music in Afghanistan, called "Orouj" (Ascension), which is about the brutal murder of Farkhunda Malikzada who was accused of burning Quran. Majid Kazemi and Faarjam are among the other Iranian singers/bands Mostafa Heravi has made music videos for.
Film director
As for the graduation project, Mostafa Heravi wrote and directed a short film (19 minutes) named Dawn (Persian: شفق) in 2007, which won several awards, including best Dutch students' movie of the year and public award at the TENTAcademy Awards in 2oo7. Dawn is a short film about a pub where only one customer notices all the changes. While the other customers keep to themselves, the Iranian man tries to tackle the problems of the café.