Baharlou studied economics at the National University (Shahid Beheshti University). He went to the United States of America in 1973 and studied moviemaking. He stayed there until 1978. He made his first movie called "The End of Childhood". In 1978, he came back to Iran for a very short time and then came back to the United States and started to work for the Voice of America. He quit working for the VOA-PNN in 2008.