Los Angeles, Calif., Mar 11, 2016 / 11:51 am
Cyrus Nowrasteh has spent his entire life caught in between cultural viewpoints. Born in the U.S., his parents moved him back to their native Iran as a boy for several years, and he was drawn to visit again as a young adult.
But it's in his faith journey and his career as a filmmaker that Nowrasteh has really found himself caught in between worlds. Raised secularly by his culturally Muslim parents, Nowrasteh began a long conversion to Christianity after marrying his Christian wife in 1981.
And as a veteran writer-director, he has managed to upset both conservatives who took issue with his 2001 movie "The Day Reagan Was Shot," and liberals who expressed umbrage over his 2006 ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11."
After taking on the brutality of radical Islam's Sharia law in the 2009 film "The Stoning of Soraya M.", he's back this weekend with his biggest chance at a success yet: the superb, family-friendly new movie "The Young Messiah," based on Anne Rice's smash novel "Christ the Lord," both of which speculate on what Jesus was like as a child growing into understanding His divine nature.