Nosrat Karimi (*1924, Tehran, †2011, Tehran, Iran) was one of the most significant pioneers of Iranian animation, puppet film, and cinema. He made the first stop-motion film and the first puppet film in Iran and founded the country’s first animation studio. After early training in Tehran, Karimi traveled to Europe in 1953.

He worked as an assistant director to Vittorio De Sica in Rome before studying under Karel Zeman at FAMU in Prague, where he specialized in animated and puppet film. FAMU trained many of the key figures of West Asian cinema, and Karimi was among them. He returned to Iran in 1964. His graduation work, Life Insurance (1957), was one of the first animated films made by an Iranian. It is a stop-motion puppet animation about a short-sighted hunter in the jungle who ends up fleeing from a lion. Life (1965), presented here, was made after his return to his homeland. It is rhythmic and playful, showing plants through their life cycle and struggle for survival. The film brings together Karimi’s European training and the visual language of Persian miniature painting.