The past Iranian year (ending March 20) was fruitful for the Documentary and Experimental Film Center (DEFC) since eighteen of its products won international awards.
“Among our 375 products in various fields such as documentary, fiction, and animation attending 265 international festivals, 51 films could take part in competition sections and other sideline events of the festivals,” FNA quoted the head of international affairs and marketing of the center as saying.
Having participated in many festivals, documentary film ‘Trucker and the Fox’, directed by Arash Lahouti, was the center’s most successful film, honored by several awards such as honorary diploma for brilliant director at Open City Docs festival (in London), jury prize at student film festival of ‘Human Right’ (in Ukraine), jury prize at press festival of ‘A Message to Human’ (in Russia), jury special prize at documentary festival of ‘The Vast Sky’ (in the US), and best documentary film award at the 7th San Francisco Festival of Iranian movies, Shirin Naderi noted.
Also ‘Iranian Ninja’, another documentary film directed by Marjan Riahi, was awarded best documentary prize at Vesoul Festival in France, and jury prize at Baghdad film festival, she added.
‘The Old Tree’, an animation by Farnoush Abedi, ‘The Knit Doll’ a documentary by Ezzatollah Parvazeh, and ‘This Is the Way of Lovingness’ another documentary by Allah-Karam Rezaei were other center products which won awards.
“Twelve documentary films were purchased by foreigners during the year among which ‘Trucker and the Fox’ and ‘Tehran Has No More Pomegranates’ were widely welcomed in the world,” Naderi said.
She announced that the center would participate in the 18th film market of International Fajr Film Festival to be held in May in Tehran, by presenting movies such as ‘Atlan’, ‘I want to Be A King’, and ‘Fried Fish’.
Located in Tehran, DEFC is the main center for production, distribution and promotion of fiction, documentary, animation and experimental films in the Middle East. It produces about 25 long feature and 300 short films per year. In Iran, annually about 80 feature and 2500 professional and amateur short films are produced.
Moreover, it offers services to film festivals, film markets, TV Channels, theaters, universities, institutes and other organizations, which are interested in Iranian fiction, documentary, animation, experimental and feature films.
