Takhti the World Champion
Jahan Pahlevan Takhti

Director : Behruz Afkhami Producer: Hedayat Film Scriptwriter: Behruz Afkhami Photography: Nemat Haghighi Editor: Hassan Hassandust Art Directors: Parvin Safari, Majid Mir-Fakhraie Sound Recorder: Bahman Heydari Sound Mix: Mohammad-Reza Delpak Make-up: Mehrdad Mir-Kiani, Nahid Tolou Special Effects: Mehdi Bahmanpoor Cast: Fariborz Arab-Nia, Niki Karimi, Mohammad-Reza Sharifi-Nia, Fathaali Oveissi, Jamshid Gorguin, Ahmad Najafi, Mahmud Kalari Color, 100 min.

Ali Hatami's film on the life of Iranian wrestling champion Takhti remains unfinished.  Another director is assigned to finish the project.  The new director wants to carry out research on the life of the champion, and it would seem that he will have to solve numerous problems before he can finish the job..

"It is unbelievable, but nevertheless true, that 30 years after Gholamreza Takhti's death, and two decades after the Islamic Revolution, no serious, official investigation has been conducted on the circumstances of the death of the shy, introvert world champion.  Any inquisitive researcher faces in the beginning stages with a walls of indifference, preconceptions, oblivion and willful suppression of information.  Takhti's life and death are still regarded in many ways as political issues, and thus it is concluded that truth could be sacrificed for the sake of expediency.  Making a movie on Takhti was for me a way of going back to the days of documentary film making.  I tries to understand how he had really lived and died, not how he is supposed to have lived and died."