In 1986, Nowrasteh began his career by writing for the CBS television series
The Equalizer. He went on to work on
Falcon Crest as a producer and story editor and wrote the pilot for the
USA Network show
La Femme Nikita (1996). He made his directorial debut with the
Veiled Threat, a 1989 independent film based on the real-life murder of an Iranian journalist living in Orange County. The film was pulled from the
AFI Film Festival after organizers received bomb threats, allegedly due to the film's criticism of
Khomeni. Nowrasteh subsequently accused the AFI of buckling to "censorship" and claimed their pulling the film "killed" its chances at distribution. He also worked on independent films such as the American/Brazilian production
The Interview (1995), which played at
Sundance and on the
Showtime network; and
Norma Jean, Jack and Me (1998). 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. 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. Nowrasteh admitted dramatic license in the movie. However, he maintained that a certain amount of dramatic license must be allotted in the process of writing a dramatic script with a historical underpinning (see
docudrama and
biopic). Although the precise conversations depicted in the script may never have taken place, he alleged that the general tone and content of events depicted in
The Path to 9/11 were true. When asked if he thought of the script as a "historical document," Nowrasteh has responded: No, but I stand by the original version of the movie, and I stand by the edited version. ... There has to be conflation of events. The most obvious problem any dramatist faces is that of sheer length. I had to collapse the events of eight and a half years into five hours. I don't know any other way to do it except collapse, conflate, and condense. 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:
The Path to 9/11 was set in the time before the event, and in a world in which no party had the political will to act. The principals did not know then what we know now. It is also indisputable that Bill Clinton entered office a month before the first attack on the World Trade Center. Eight years then went by, replete with terrorist assaults on Americans and American interests overseas. George W. Bush was in office eight months before 9/11. Those who actually watched the entire miniseries know that he was given no special treatment. 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 2008, talk show host
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, revisiting the controversy behind the ABC miniseries.
The Stoning of Soraya M. The Stoning of Soraya M. () 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. Because of its highly critical attitude toward the Iranian legal system, the controversial book, an international bestseller, was banned in Iran. Likewise, the film version of
The Stoning of Soraya M., even before its release, made its way onto a list of American films that Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deemed offensive and for which he demanded an apology. But the film's release also drew enough attention to the issue of stoning in Iran that it sufficiently embarrassed the Iranian authorities into announcing consideration of a ban on stoning and other harsh legal punishments. Writing in
The Wall Street Journal, John Jurgensen said the film was shot over six weeks in a mountain village in Jordan. The stoning sequence itself took six days to shoot. Jurgensen reports that "some human-rights advocates call the film inaccurate and sensationalistic," but that director Cyrus Nowrasteh responds, "A movie like this needs to be absolutely uncompromising in its approach. The subject demands it." The film 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. 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.
The Young Messiah 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: Out of Egypt, 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." One of the film's producers was right-wing pundit
Dinesh D’Souza, who had previously produced several political documentaries including ''
2016: Obama's America, Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, and Death of a Nation. Infidel'' is his first narrative film. The film was shot on-location in
Jordan, where Nowrasteh previously shot
Soraya M. On his website, Nowrasteh stated the Jordanian film commission kept its filming secret for fear of objections from the Iranian government, and the film had heavy security. When the Iranian government did become aware of Nowrasteh being in Amman to film and voiced its displeasure to the Jordanian government. Early test screenings of
Sarah’s Oil reportedly received highly positive audience feedback, with particular praise for historical accuracy and balance of faith elements, dramatic realism, and social commentary. ==Upcoming projects==