Malatya International Film Festival (MIFF) got under way on Friday, (Nov 21), while five movies from Iran have entered the final lineup of the seven-day program.
At the fifth annual festival Iranian films ‘Hush, Girls Don’t Scream’, ‘The Fourth Child’, ‘Trapped’, ‘Red Carpet’, and ‘For the Sake of Pouneh’ will be screened, ISNA reported.
The 2013 film, ‘Hush, Girls Don’t Scream’ is taking part in the international feature competition section, where all 10 films including from Italy, Germany, Poland and Turkey are having their Turkish premieres and vying for the festival’s Crystal Apricot awards.
This year’s edition presents close to 130 feature-length and short films from various countries for movie buffs, in various sections: World Panorama, National Panorama, as well as National and International Competitions.
Directed by Pouran Derakhshandeh, ‘Hush’ was previously shown at the department of women’s studies at Berkeley University, California, the 7th Annual Iranian Film Festival (IFF) in San Francisco, and the 10th Eurasia International Film Festival in Almaty, Kazakhstan. It won the audience award at the 2013 Fajr Film Festival, as well as top prize at the London Iranian Film Festival the same year.
The film revolves around eight-year old Shirin, and the carelessness and indifference of her parents which leads to a traumatic incident. For a long time, the scar remains within her and affects her life. The scar deepens and the incident finally ends in disaster since she is not able to find anybody to confide.
Human Dignity
The 2013 movie by Vahid Mousaian, ‘The Fourth Child’ tells the story of two people, an actress, who is giving up cinema and discovering a new world through photography, and a man, who has lost his factory. They are heading to Somalia, where “human dignity proves to be the conqueror even in the hard times of war and starvation.”
Parviz Shahbazi’s ‘Trapped’ was also made in 2013. The film centers around Nazanin, a first year medical student who shares a place in Tehran with Sahar, a girl working in a fragrance shop. Sahar borrows some money from a man in the bazaar. After a while, the man’s complaint leads to Sahar’s imprisonment and Nazanin does everything she can to get her friend released.
A 2014 joint production of Iran and France, ‘Red Carpet’ by Reza Attaran is a tragicomedy about a stage-struck man, who decides to go to Cannes Film Festival 2013 to meet Spielberg and Woody Allen and seek their help to become famous.
The film ‘For the Sake of Pouneh’ (2014) by Hatef Alimardani is about a couple who runs into a crisis because of the man’s addiction to drugs.
For the last five years, Malatya has hosted the film festival which brings together the most qualified productions in the world. Besides the competition excitement, it will be a full cinema week with many events. This festival concludes on November 27 with the award ceremony.
