Sam Kalantari was born in 1976 in Tehran, he is considered to be the fourth generation of Iranian documentary filmmakers. At the same time as he entered university he began professional photography as well. While studying civil engineering he also attended freelance classes for filmmaking. In 2000, while graduating from the university and making his first short film “The Unknown Desire” (Tamanaye Mjhoul), he entered the realm of Iran’s professional filmmaking scene.“The unknown desire “with its first international presence in in year 2001, received honorary diploma for the best short movie from the Uruguay's Tenth International Children’s Film Festival (Montevideo).
After this movie and while establishing the Institute for development of Notion Cinema , Sam has focused more on making documentaries, the important achievements of this institute can be pointed out as the movies under the names of “ Friday was a bad day” ( joint production with France) and “ From No. 37”.