Final Sequence

Esmail Koushan Through the Lens of Mahmoud Koushan

This is the story of a man who grows up in Tehran at a time when Iran has no film industry, travels to Berlin to study law, gets caught up in WWIl, charms his way into production studios, earns a PhD in economics in Vienna while honing his cinematic skills, finds an escape route in the dying days of the war via Syria and Bulgaria to Istanbul, where he runs into his long-separated brother, falls for a Greco-Turkish girl, and driven by an unrelenting pioneering spirit that will define his future, decides to dub foreign films into Persian before he returns home with his bride, brother, and film reels in tow.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

With more than 90 features to his name, the adventurous life of Esmail Koushan, father of Iranian cinema, seen through the lens of his equally enterprising younger brother, the cinematographer Mahmoud Koushan, is an indelible chapter in the history of the seventh art.

Written in hindsight to portray how one man changed a whole generation's cinematic landscape, Final Sequence is a must-listen for all who aspire to forging their own destiny against all odds, no matter what they're calling.

©2022 Kambiz Koushan (P)2023 Kambiz Koushan