Cyrus Nowrasteh

Nowrasteh directed the biblical drama The Young Messiah, which was released on 11 March 2016. The story was adapted by Cyrus and Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh from Anne Rice's Christ the Lord, and was produced by 1492 Pictures and Ocean Blue Entertainment in association with CJ E&M Film Division. The film was distributed by Focus Features. The project had a jump start in early 2013 but was shut down in preproduction and was seemingly dead. Then in late 2014, the project was resurrected thanks to the efforts of Tracy K. Price and Bill Andrew, along with Italian producer Enzo Sisti. Filmed in Matera and Rome, Italy, the plot follows Jesus Christ at age seven, when he returns to Nazareth and learns about his true place as the son of God.

On 10 December 2015, Nowrasteh was interviewed on EWTN by Raymond Arroyo. Nowrasteh said of the film: "This is really a movie about a family and we take you inside the Holy Family."

For both of the above films, Nowrasteh received the Pen USA West Literary Award for Best Teleplay—the only writer in the history of the Pen awards to win two years in a row in the same category. The Day Reagan Was Shot also received the Eddie Award and the Golden Satellite Award for Best Motion Picture for Television, 2001, as well as a SAG nomination for Best Actor (Richard Dreyfuss).

Critics—including President Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright, former Clinton aides, an FBI agent who quit as a consultant to the film, 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee H. Hamilton, and some conservatives, including Bill Bennett and John Fund—asserted that the film contained inaccuracies such as its depiction of Clinton as so distracted by the Lewinsky scandal that he neglected the terrorism issue (although the 9/11 Commission Report states that "we have found no reason to question" the testimony of Clinton aides who claimed that the Lewinsky scandal had no bearing on national security considerations). Nowrasteh is quoted in the documentary Blocking the Path to 9/11 as saying that his intention in depicting Clinton as "somewhat hamstrung" in his response to terrorism was, ironically, to make Clinton a more sympathetic figure.

In 2010, the film was hailed as one of Movieguide's Ten Best 2009 Movies for Mature Audiences and was the co-winner, with Invictus, of Movieguide's Faith and Freedom Award for Promoting Positive American Values for 2009. It also shared, with "Women in Shroud," the Cinema for Peace Award for Justice in conjunction with the Berlin Film Festival and won Outstanding Foreign Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards.

Nowrasteh wrote and produced the controversial ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11. He then went on to co-write (with his wife, Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh), and direct the film The Stoning of Soraya M., released in 2009 by Lionsgate Films.

The Stoning of Soraya M. had its world premiere at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won Runner-up for the Audience Choice Award. It also won Second Runner-up for the Cadillac People's Choice Award, as well as the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival. The film also won the Heartland Truly Moving Picture Award, and the 2009 Ghent Film Festival's Canvas Audience Award. At the 2009 Satellite Awards, it was named one of the year's Top Ten Films and nominated for Best Drama Film, while its star Shohreh Agdashloo won Best Actress in a Drama.

Linking the film's June 2009 release to the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests occurring simultaneously, and referring to the continued practice of stoning in that country, Hugh Hewitt wrote in The Washington Examiner, "Every American who sees The Stoning of Soraya M will emerge from the theater far wiser about what is driving the revolt of the people in Iran."

In August 2008, talk show host and documentary filmmaker John Ziegler and producer David Bossie of Citizens United premiered a documentary co-produced, written and directed by Ziegler entitled Blocking The Path to 9/11, which revisits the political controversy behind the ABC miniseries. Through interviews with the Path to 9/11 filmmakers (including Nowrasteh) and others, news clips regarding the controversy, and footage from the miniseries itself, the documentary asserts not only that accusations of the filmmakers' covert political agenda were unfounded, but that they were generated by Clinton-era politicians concerned that the miniseries tarnished their political legacy, and were reported uncritically by bloggers and a biased news media. The documentary also claims that Disney/ABC ultimately shelved plans to release a DVD of the miniseries as a result of pressure from the political left, specifically the Clintons themselves. As noted in the documentary, Disney/ABC denies this and claims the decision not to release a DVD was purely a business decision.

The Stoning of Soraya M. (Persian: .سنگسار ثريا م ‎) is a 2008 American drama film adapted from French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam's 1994 book of the same name based on the true story of a woman falsely convicted of adultery in Iran and subsequently stoned to death. The film version was directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh and written by Nowrasteh and his wife, screenwriter Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh. It stars Academy Award nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo, as well as James Caviezel and Mozhan Marnò.

Critics, including 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste pointed out that some scenes in the film were complete fabrications. Richard Miniter, a conservative author and critic of the Clinton administration, said that a key scene with Sandy Berger was based on "Internet myth": "If people wanted to be critical of the Clinton years there's things they could have said, but the idea that someone had bin Laden in his sights in 1998 or any other time and Sandy Berger refused to pull the trigger, there's zero factual basis for that." Nowrasteh wrote about his work on Path To 9/11 in an opinion piece in the opinionjournal.com on 18 September 2006. He stated:

In 2001, Nowrasteh wrote and directed the highly rated, award-winning Showtime presentation The Day Reagan Was Shot, which starred Richard Dreyfuss as Alexander Haig and was executive produced by Oliver Stone. The following year he wrote 10,000 Black Men Named George, the story of the Pullman strike of the 1930s, for Showtime.

Nowrasteh was attacked by Conservatives for an alleged "liberal bias" in his Showtime film, The Day Reagan Was Shot. Former Reagan National Security Advisor, Richard Allen, led the charge with a piece in the Wall Street Journal (14 December 2001), accusing Nowrasteh and Executive Producer Oliver Stone of "yet another dubious Oliver Stone production" and referring to it as "The Day They Shot the Truth." Mr. Allen based his piece on tapes he had kept from that day, releasing only six minutes to support his position. Nowrasteh responded in the Los Angeles Times (24 December 2001) and a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal (2 January 2002), "the clear solution is to have Allen release the entire unedited tape and allow anyone to make the comparisons and draw whatever conclusions seem warranted." Nowrasteh concluded his Los Angeles Times piece by writing, "The Day Reagan Was Shot provides the first-ever dramatization of a constitutional crisis and government cover-up (both amply supported by facts) and the threat they pose to a nation when a president becomes incapacitated. This is important and relevant and raises issues that should be discussed openly."

The 2006 ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11 aired under much controversy. Critics said it fictionalized the lead-up to the 11 September 2001 attacks in order to direct blame to the Clinton administration. Although Nowrasteh's screenplay for The Path to 9/11 was billed by the ABC network as having been "based on the 9/11 Commission Report", there were accusations that the screenplay evidenced political bias because of its allegedly contrafactual portrayal of events.

In 1986, Nowrasteh began his career by writing for the CBS television series The Equalizer. He went on to work on other series (Falconcrest, D.E.A.), and wrote the pilot for the USA Network show La Femme Nikita (1996). He also worked on independent films such as the American/Brazilian production The Interview (1997, writer/co-producer), which played at Sundance and on the Showtime network; and Norma Jean, Jack and Me (1998), a film that was not theatrically released but played the festival circuit and aired on HDNet.

Among Nowrasteh's upcoming projects were reportedly to be film adaptations of Thomas Tessier's book The Nightwalker and The Last Campaign, Thurston Clarke's account of Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign.

Cyrus Nowrasteh born (1956-09-19 ) 19 September 1956) is an American screenwriter and director of theatrical films, television shows, and made-for-TV movies. He is best known for his involvement in the controversial docudrama The Path to 9/11.

Nowrasteh was born on 19 September 1956, in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. He is of Iranian descent. He graduated from Madison West High School in 1974 and was a city boys high school tennis champion. Nowrasteh attended New Mexico State University on an athletic scholarship and later transferred to the University of Southern California to attend the School of Cinematic Arts, graduating in 1977.

Nowrasteh is married to Elizabeth ("Betsy") G. Nowrasteh (born 1953). They have two sons, Alex and Mark.

His most notable other project is a film about Andrew Jackson entitled The Battle of New Orleans. He is partnered with producer/manager Alan Siegel and Gerard Butler has expressed interest in portraying Jackson who led a ragtag army in defeating the British at New Orleans on 8 January 1815.