Iran will participate with five feature films at the 46th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), slated for November 20-30 in the state of Goa.
The films include ‘The Man Who Became a Horse’ directed by Amirhossein Saqafi, ‘Closer’ by Mostafa Ahmadi, ‘My Mother’s Blue Sky’ by Ali Qavitan, ‘Wednesday, May 9’ by Vahid Jalilvand and ‘Nahid’ by Ida Panahandeh, which are to be screened in different sections of the festival, Mehr News Agency reported.
‘The Man Who Became a Horse’ is the only Iranian movie in the International Competition Section which will compete with 14 other films to win the main awards.
Based on Anton Chekhov’s short story ‘Sorrow’, it explores the extremely lunatic state of a man’s inner world taken over by self-pity.
Screening at the Cinema of the World section, ‘Closer’ narrates the story of a family that has come together again after a long time.
The star-studded cast includes Saber Abar, Pegah Ahangarani, Parsa Piroozfar, Setareh Eskandari, Nazanin Farahani, Mohammad Bahrani and Shirin Yazdanbakhsh.
Also shown in this section is ‘My Mother’s Blue Sky’ which tells the story of an eight-year-old boy Amir who tries to safeguard a family-owned coal mine on a hill far from their village after his widowed mother dies.
Jalilvand’s debut feature ‘Wednesday, May 9’ will be screened at the First Cut Section.
The movie which won the INTERFILM award at the 72nd Venice Film Festival in Italy in September depicts a part of the lives of three families in modern Tehran, whose members suffer from poverty, family disputes and physical disability to imprisonment, loss of a child and a pang of conscience.
Actors Niki Karimi, Amir Aqaee, Shahrokh Forutanian, Borzu Arjmand and Sahar Ahmadpur are among the cast.
‘Nahid’ is another first film from Iran in this section. It was awarded the special prize for promising futures at the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section of the Cannes Film Festival.
The film follows Nahid, a single mother who wants to remarry but risks losing custody of her son if she does.
Sareh Bayat, Pejman Bazeghi and Navid Mohammadzadeh are in the movie.
Since inception in 1952 the IFFI has been the biggest event of its type in India. It aims at providing a common platform for the cinemas of the world to project the excellence of film art, and promote friendship and cooperation among the comity of nations.
The IFFI’s founding principles center on discovery, promotion and support of filmmaking of all genres - thus bringing together diversity of forms, aesthetics and content.
