Atiq Rahimi
Atiq Rahimi (born 1962) is an Afghan-French novelist and filmmaker who fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion and built his career in France. Born in Kabul to a senior civil servant and educated at the Lycée Esteqlal, he took refuge in Pakistan before being granted political asylum in France in 1985, where he later completed a PhD in audio-visual communications at the Sorbonne. His breakthrough novel Earth and Ashes (2000) became his first feature film as director in 2004, winning a prize in Cannes' Un Certain Regard. His French-language novel The Patience Stone won the 2008 Prix Goncourt, and he adapted it himself into a 2012 film starring Golshifteh Farahani — Afghanistan's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. His third feature, Our Lady of the Nile, opened the Contemporary World Cinema programme at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.