TEHRAN -- Filmmaker Seifollah Daad, credited for his famous hit “The Survivor,” a drama about a Palestinian woman, died at 54.

Author and film editor Daad was hospitalized in Tehran’s Mehr Hospital on July 20 and died of a heart attack on Tuesday. He had been suffering from a type of cancer for years.
Daad was the former deputy culture minister for cinematic affairs in the mid-1990s. He had also headed the House of Cinema for two years. In 1996, he established the Iran Cinema Celebration which gave a new look to the Fajr film festival.
His dream to make a film on Prophet Mohammad (S) was never realized even though he had carried out the preliminary research for it.
Daad made great efforts to remove obstacles to screening movies in Iran and turned into a popular figure during his tenure in management.
Born in 1955 in Khorramshahr, Daad was a graduate of the University of Shiraz, majoring in sociology.
He directed “Kani-Manga” in 1987 which turned out to be a box office hit in its time. Daad had also been assigned to do the final cut of “The Morning Son,” a TV series directed by Behruz Afkhami featuring the life of Imam Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic.
His future plans were to direct the episode “Tehran from the Beyond” from the movie “Tehran in Search of Beauty”.
“It is difficult to be a manager and still be viewed with affection by cinematic figures. It is also hard to make a film on the Iran-Iraq war as these kinds of films are not easy to make, but still remain popular. I experienced a sense of freedom under Daad’s management and felt encouraged to make movies in those years,” Filmmaker Sirus Alvand once said in a commemoration ceremony held last summer.
Mohammad Beheshti, who was once head of the Farabi Cinematic Foundation, had also talked about Daad in the same ceremony, saying that Daad was one of his closest friends, “many come and go in the routine life of cinema like a gently flowing stream. But as time goes by, one should not only watch the stream, but also notice the flowers and cedars growing alongside the stream with their huge shadows. Daad is one of those cedars.”
Daad had also expressed hope in the ceremony that Iran’s cinema would reach its rightful place it.
The funeral procession will begin Wednesday in front of the 2nd building of the House of Cinema located at the intersection of Taleqani and Vesal. He will be buried in the Artists Section of Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery.
Photo: Seifollah Daad edits “The Morning Son”, a biopic of Imam Khomeini directed by Behruz Afkhami, in an undated photo.