Caveh Zahedi

Caveh Zahedi is an autobiographical writer/actor/director who combines both dramatic and documentary elements in his work. His films have won awards at major international film festivals and have been distributed theatrically, released on DVD, and broadcast on television.

He is a Guggenheim recipient, a MacDowell Fellow, and a winner of the 2005 Gotham Award for Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Film Institute, Creative Capital, and the San Francisco Arts Commission.

In 2007 Zahedi won the prestigious Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. He plans to use the fellowship to write a screenplay adaptation of Ulysses, James Joyce's epic work of experimental literature, devoting an hour of screen time to each of the book's 18 chapters.

Also in 2007 Zahedi received a Sundance Documentary Fund development grant for his future project The Prime Minister, the Shah, the Ayatollah, and I. This personal essay film explores growing up as an Iranian American during a time when the United States and Iran went from being allies to being enemies.

Zahedi's films include A Little Stiff (1991), I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore (1994), In the Bathtub of the World (2001), and I Am a Sex Addict (2005). He has also appeared as an actor in Waking Life (2001), A Sign From God (2000), Money Buys Happiness (1999), and Citizen Ruth (1996).