Nasser Taghvai (born on July 13, 1941) is a film director and screenwriter. Despite lacking formal training in filmmaking, Taghvai ventured into cinema in 1965, initially joining the technical staff for the film Brick and Mirror (Khisht va Āyinah, 1965). This experience ignited his fascination with documentaries. In 1967, he directed his first documentary film for Television, titled Tāksī Mitr (Taxi Meter), alongside several other documentaries. His short film Rahāyī (Release, 1971) won three major international awards for Best Short Film, including the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival, the Golden Gate Award at San Francisco International Film Festival, and the Golden India Catalina at Cartagena Film Festival.

After directing short documentaries for an Iranian national TV show and authoring screenplays, Taghvai made his film debut Ārāmish dar huzūr-i dīgarān (Tranquility in the Presence of Others, 1973), an adaptation of Gholam-Hossein Saʿedi’s short story. This movie underscores Taghvai’s dedication to literary adaptations in Iranian cinema and his significant contribution to the Iranian New Wave. He returned to the literary genre with film adaptations such as Nākhudā Khurshīd (Captain Khorshid, 1987), based on Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, which is largely recognized as an outstanding cinematic adaptation in Iranian cinema. He also created a popular TV series Dā’ī jān Nāpil’un (My Uncle Napoleon, 1976), based on a novel by the same name written by Iraj Pezeshkzad.

Taghvai faced financial difficulties, censorship, and a lack of support from state-sponsored film institutions, resulting in several unfinished projects, including the television series Kūchik’i Jangalī (Kuchek Jangali, 1984), and two feature films Zangī va Rūmī (The Zanj and the Roman, 2003) and Chāy-i Talkh (The Bitter Tea, 2004).