The 5th Iran International Green Film Festival (IIGFF) officially opened on Friday evening at Tehran’s Felestin (Palestine) Cinema after a 10-year hiatus.
Programs at the opening ceremony included the screening of ‘Terra’ directed by the French filmmaker and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand and speeches by festival secretary Farhad Tohidi, Vice President and Head of the Department of Environment (DoE) Masoumeh Ebtekar and German director of Green Me Global Festival Nicolai Niemann, also a jury member at the event, Mehr News Agency reported.
The films will be screened in Felestin Cinema and Saba Artistic Cultural Center. The selected movies will also be screened simultaneously in 21 provincial centers in Iran.
Organized by the DoE, the festival seeks to promote the culture of environmental protection through artistic expression and recognize valuable artworks to increase public awareness on environmental issues. It is also an effort to create closer bonds between artists and society on environmental protection.
The festival has national and international competition sections and will show feature and short films, documentaries and animations. Related workshops, conferences, seminars and speeches are also scheduled on the sidelines of the event. In the closing ceremony on May 20, Golden Gazelle awards and cash prizes will be presented to winners from different sections.
41 Foreign Participants
Films from 41 foreign countries will be shown during the festival. Germany, France and the US have the highest number of entries.
In a statement to the festival, Ebtekar said that cinema is the most powerful language for communication and helps change attitudes and behavior. In the recent decade, it has been not only an influential cultural medium but also a profitable industry for those who are nvolved. “Producing films on environmental protection could be a strong step toward saving the Earth and improving human welfare,” she said.
“The festival seeks to help save the fragile environment by a trend-making medium and an expressive language of cinema. It also represents a peace-oriented and farsighted Iran, which is concerned about sustainable development and the people’s wellbeing in a region plagued with chaos, violence and insecurity,” she noted.
Prominent actors Reza Kianian and Fatemeh Motamed-Arya have been appointed as the environmental ambassadors of the festival. Both actors are involved in environmental activities and have often responded to problems facing environmental protection in Iran.
