Esmail Koushan (Persian: اسماعیل کوشان) (1917-1981) was an Iranian film director who was one of the pioneering figures of Persian cinema. He was one of the first active figures in the Second Filmmaking Period (post 1945) there he has been called "the father of the Iranian film industry" by Georges Sadoul. Koushan, who studied film-making in Germany at Universum Film Aktienge-Sellschafe (UFA), began by dubbing foreign-language films into Persian. He then