Reza Naji

Mohamad Reza Amir Naji (pronunciation^ⓘ) is an Iranian theatre, film and TV actor and an iconic figure of Iranian cinema.

Reza Naji
رضا ناجی
Naji in 2008, after Berlin International Film Festival
Born	(1942-12-26) 26 December 1942 (age 82) Tabriz, Iran

Career

Naji started his career in theater as a teenager. While serving in the Iranian army, he continued to perform. His first film role was Children of Heaven (1997), which proved to be a breakthrough. For the role of Ali's father, director Majid Majidi sought an actor with an Azeri accent, and Naji was carefully selected from a group of 2,500 actors tested for the role.

Since then, he has played various roles in Iranian cinema. Among his most notable performances is Majidi's The Song of Sparrows, for which Naji won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, and Best Performance by an Actor at the 2008 Asia Pacific Screen Awards.^[1]

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1997	Children of Heaven	Ali's Father
1998	Birth of a Butterfly
2001	Baran	Memar
2002	Parandeh baz-e kouchak
2005	The Willow Tree	Morteza
2007	Sargije
2008	The Song of Sparrows	Karim	Silver Bear, Berlin Film Festival[citation needed]
2014	Harud	Yusuf	Kashmiri film
2014	Towards Freedom
2014	Teacher
2014	Love is not Closed
2018	We Are All Together
2020	After the Incident
2023	The Crab	Eghbal

Awards

• 2008: Berlin International Film Festival: Silver Bear for Best Actor: The Song of Sparrows ^[2]
• 2008: Best Performance by an Actor at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.