Shahin K. Taher holds a doctorate in film and philosophy from the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, and a master of Fine Arts in film production from York University in Toronto with a thesis on the directing methods of John Cassavetes. He studied digital post-production at Sheridan College in Canada.

He has written and directed 12 short films and 1 feature, working as a producer and editor on his own work. The feature, Naked Til Night, screened at the 29th Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran and at the Falstaff International Film Festival in England. His short film The Key won at the Sunny Film Festival in Berlin. He has also written and directed six stage plays, and is currently directing a second feature, “A Dog’s Life of a Precise Woman.”

He is a published novelist and translator, with four novels, two books on cinema and a collection of short fiction. His translations into Persian include interview collections on Borges, Hemingway, Derrida, Vonnegut, Hitchcock, Peckinpah and Arthur Penn. His academic work on cinema and social change has been published in CINEJ Cinema Journal, and he lectured in film studies and film production at university level for six years.

His screenplay Treemonisha was a semi-finalist at Shore Scripts and a quarter-finalist at ScreenCraft. Damn With Faint Praise was a quarter-finalist at Final Draft Big Break and at ScreenCraft. The Canadian Job was a semi-finalist at the Wiki Screenplay Contest. 30 Hours in Ovda reached the quarter-finals at the Pitch Now Screenplay Competition.