Caveh Zahedi

In 2006, To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen sets out to make television history. When a high stakes operation goes fatally wrong, his veneered dream of fame curdles into a nightmare of performative justice.

Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life.

After finding an ad online for “video work,” Sara, a video artist whose primary focus is creating intimacy with lonely men, thinks she may have found the subject of her dreams. She drives to a remote house in the forest and meets a man claiming to be a serial killer. Unable to resist the chance to create a truly shocking piece of art, she agrees to spend the day with him. However, as the day goes on, she discovers she may have dug herself into a hole from which she can’t escape.

A family gathers on Christmas Eve for what could be the last holiday in their ancestral home. As the night wears on and tensions arise, one of the teenagers sneaks out with her friends to claim the wintry suburb for her own.

In the aftermath of a conspiracy-minded father’s sudden death, his daughter inherits his patent for an experimental healing device.

Based on true stories, ALLURE is a process-driven film, where filmmakers and actors worked together through a series of improvisations to tell the stories of five women in New York, who come from five very different countries. Each one struggles to overcome her personal conflict, set against the Occupy Wall Street movements of 2011. These stories touch and inform each other, and create a larger narrative about gender, emigration, power, class, and personal politics.

Just moments before his third wedding, Zahedi relates with utter sincerity and astonishing candor his obsession with prostitutes. He retraces his romantic and sexual history, including his ideological commitment to open relationships, that led to two disastrous marriages and several very pissed off ex-girlfriends.

On January 1st, 1999, Caveh Zahedi started a one-year video diary. The idea was to shoot one minute each day. This is the result.

After Richard finds out that his best and only friend, a dwarf hamster named Etienne, has terminal cancer, he decides to take his pocket pet on a bicycle road trip to show him the world before he has to put him to sleep.

"Citizen Ruth" is the story of Ruth Stoops, a woman who nobody even noticed -- until she got pregnant. Now, everyone wants a piece of her. The film is a comedy about one woman caught in the ultimate tug-of-war: a clash of wild, noisy, ridiculous people that rapidly dissolves into a media circus.

Caveh is commissioned by Fandor to film awkward celebrity encounters at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. This is a documentary about his time at the festival filming those encounters.

In an effort to continue using filmmaking as exposure therapy (after conquering her fear of the Tube in Tube Film), filmmaker Orla Smith tackles an even bigger fear: planes. On a trip to Porto, the camera is wielded as a shield against panic attacks. But this time, things don’t go exactly to plan.

This film has nothing to do with Robert Louis Stevenson's classic story, but rather a naval base of the same name located in San Francisco Bay. Set amid WWII, TREASURE ISLAND follows two American code specialists that are hard at work trying to decipher Japanese messages and sending confusing messages back to deceive the enemy. The film explores sexual themes that were prevalent during the period, but not shown in the movies of that era. Frank, a bigamist, is married to two women and is pursuing a third wife. Samuel and his wife Penny are in a ménage à trois, which he participates in to cover up his homosexuality. As the pressures of the men’s lives begin to eat away at them, the dead body starts to torment Frank and Samuel's subconscious, interacting with the private stories of their lives.

Independent Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi is trying to make a television show. He persuades BRIC TV, a Brooklyn non-profit Arts organization, to finance a television show whose premise is that every episode will be about the making of the previous episode. In the process of creating the show, everything can-and does-go wrong. The cast, a who's who of Brooklyn's independent filmmaking community, includes Alex Karpovsky, Eleonore Hendricks, Dustin Defa, and Onur Tukel.

A feature documentary about the writer JT LeRoy - Ethically charged, controversial, and confusing, JT’s life and death sprang open a Pandora’s box of powerful questions about literature and culture, identity and celebrity, and the reality of the society we live in. Fraud? Art? Mental illness? Complicity? The Cult of JT Leroy will be a testament to this bizarre and elaborate story that has captured the attention and fascination of the world’s media, and perplexes to this day.

A documentary record of the live event hosted by Video Store(age) on February 27 at Life World in New York City. The roasters included the following luminaries, trouble makers, and last-minute substitutions: Yung Chomsky, Lily Lady, Christian Lorentzen, Sharon Mashihi, Peter Rinaldi, Joe Swanberg, Onur Tukel, Pacho Velez, and Joshua Z. Weinstein.

Finally deciding to publicize their work, ambitious artists Sydney and Spencer will stop at nothing to bypass the gatekeepers of the Cincinnati art world.

Fragments from a would-be abecedarium: E IS FOR ELEVATOR, J IS FOR JUMP, K IS FOR KISSING, M IS FOR MAGGOT and S IS FOR STRANGER.

Apropos of Acid Snow is a modern adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground. The story of a man who is stuck in his own head.

Apropos of Acid Snow is a modern adaptation of Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The story of a modern underground man who is too in his head.

In 2022, Caveh Zahedi decided to stage a production of James Joyce's Ulysses with barely any money and just a month to write, cast and rehearse. Ulysses, New York documents the chaos in Zahedi's distinctive, intensely confessional style over the course of 24 hour long episodes. Currently a work in progress.

Sophia's friends decide to leave so she can get stoned with Caveh and talk about interpersonal relationships, future plans, and a forwarded email.

Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi receives a fan letter from a French singer living in Berlin. They begin an epistolary correspondence which graduates to Zoom calls that become increasingly intimate. They decide to meet in London and bring a camera person to film what happens.

Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States and Europe, based on his experience as a critic.

A short documentary on the filming of the ecstasy scene in I Am a Sex Addict.

A real-life comedy about a filmmaker who takes a road trip to Las Vegas -- with his real-life father and 16-year-old half-brother, plus a crew of three -- in the hopes of proving the existence of God.

A compilation of footage from The Threee Geniuses. “The most intentionally psychedelic television show on cable TV.”

With longtime collaborators Greg Watkins (A Little Stiff) and Thomas Logoreci, the charismatic, experimental filmmaker Caveh Zahedi approaches legendary songwriter Will Oldham (Palace Brothers, Bonnie "Prince" Billy) in an unconventional interview. Caveh offers up a serving of psychedelic mushrooms and a view on the relationship between the musician and his fan.

A short documentary on the filming of the mushroom scene in I Am a Sex Addict.

When an American filmmaker is commissioned to make a film for a Middle East Biennial on the theme of 'art as a subversive act,' his film is banned for blasphemy, he is asked to destroy every copy, and threatened with arrest.

A short documentary on the filming of the hotel scene in I Am a Sex Addict.

A Little Stiff is a 1991 minimalist comedy directed by Caveh Zahedi and Greg Watkins based on true events and re-enacted by the actual participants. Caveh Zahedi plays himself as a neurotic film student who develops a crush on art student Erin McKim after a brief encounter in an elevator.

A married Seattle couple struggle in their relationship as they approach the millennium, each looking for new directions in their life. He dreams of shedding all material worth and going on a spiritual awakening. She wants a new relationship with an old lover who wrote her a love note years ago. When a male friend commits suicide, he leaves all of his belongings to his friends. The two choose a piano from his possessions, which comes to represent the couple's relationship as he pushes the piano 50 blocks across the city to their home.

On Valentine's Day, 1993, Caveh Zahedi decided to ingest 5 grams (a very large dose) of hallucinogenic mushrooms. For the first time in his mushroom-taking history, he had an experience of "divine possession," in which he felt that a divine being took possession of his body and spoke through him, in a voice that was not his, and with knowledge that he himself did not possess. He later tried several times to repeat the experience. I WAS POSSESSED BY GOD is the documentary record of one such attempt.

A filmmaker embarks on a journey of making what he thinks will be his masterpiece, but the reception of the movie is not what he had in mind.

Caveh gets stoned but Alex Ross Perry doesn't.

A semi-fictionalized day in the life of independent filmmaker Caveh (Caveh Zahedi) and his girlfriend Laura (Laura Macias) as they struggle with a series of challenges and accidents (including eviction from their apartment, possible pregnancy, and a car crash) while desperately seeking a sign from God about the future of their troubled relationship.

Caveh persuades Mandy and their couples therapist to let him film their sessions.

Independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi meets his childhood idol.

Jo-Jo is a young woman who hears voices.

Caveh gets stoned with Kevin Corrigan.

A battle of wits between NYC cinephiles.

After serving three long years in prison, a registered sex offender returns to civilization, only to find an environment that's completely uncivilized. At the top of his list is finding a job — and getting his vindictive girlfriend to put out again.

Caveh gets stoned. Jon Jost doesn't.

The epic conclusion to Caveh Zahedi's THE SHOW ABOUT THE SHOW

Caveh Zahedi looks for the grave of Joyce Hunter, a figure of infatuation for the artist Joseph Cornell.

The prelude to The Class About the Class - Caveh Zahedi’s project made with his students at the European Graduate School in Malta.

Caveh gets stoned with Alex Karpovsky.

How to live a long life filled with regret.

The story of how and why an American programmer tried to censor an Iranian-American filmmaker for making a film about censorship in the Middle East.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts commissions Caveh Zahedi to make a film.

A short documentary on the filming of the wedding scene in I Am a Sex Addict.

20 years after Tripping with Caveh, Will Oldham and Caveh Zahedi get stoned together.

The Ion Pack, New York City’s once-anonymous Instagram trolls of the downtown film world, talk with filmmakers as they contemplate life, love and longing in the city of 8 million stories.

Caveh gets stoned. Andrew doesn't.

Caveh Zahedi tells the story of a contentious encounter with a college security guard, a story about a moment's lapse into racism. The film attempts to shed light on the mental process by which racism becomes internalized.

An animated short about a film-shoot gone awry.

Caveh gets stoned with indie filmmaker Bob Byington whose film, Registered Sex Offender, he once acted in.

Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi and member of The Yes Men Jacques Servin give classes in bringing about political change and make a web show of this. A hilarious and painfully honest report on this process, in which students and teachers slowly but surely get to know – and appreciate – one another.

Caveh Zahedi's allegory about 9/11.

Video diary shot during the making of Alexander Payne's Citizen Ruth

Prelude to I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore, shot two years prior.

Zahedi’s acceptance speech at the Gotham Awards

From 1999 to 2000, filmmaker Caveh Zahedi corresponded in a series of video-letters with his friend Thomas Logoreci.

This film is a birthday gift to Caveh Zahedi's girlfriend Amada (Mandy) Field. Mr. Zahedi arranged for one of his friends to film her all day on her birthday as his special birthday gift to her.

A mockumentary examination of Shakespeare's greatest tragedy using "breaking news" style interviews and commentary.

A Fandor commissioned documentary of Caveh's awkward encounters with celebrities at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

The Sundance Channel gives Zahedi a still camera to chronicle his Sundance experience.

Part 1 of The Class About the Class - Caveh Zahedi's project made with his students at The New School.

The continuing saga of Caveh Zahedi's collaboration with students at The New School.