Djalal Khaleghi Motlagh was born in Tehran in 1937 and moved to Germany after finishing high school to continue his studies. Although he initially came to Germany to study economics, he soon pursued a different academic path. At the University of Cologne, he completed his doctoral thesis, Women in the Shahnameh, later became a lecturer in Persian at the University of Hamburg, and spent more than 35 years collecting manuscripts and editing Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.
His groundbreaking work has had a lasting impact on the study and editing of Persian texts. According to scholars, the history of text editing in Iran can be divided into two periods: before and after Khaleghi Motlagh.The documentary explores Khaleghi Motlagh’s arrival in West Germany, the previously untold story of the independence of the Department of Iranian Studies at the University of Hamburg, and the motivations and methods behind his extensive work on the Shahnameh. It also traces how his edition of the epic was ultimately published in both the United States and Iran. The Director of the film is Mohammadali Mirzaee.
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