‘Release From Heaven’ in Cannes Lineup

Iranian animated film ‘Release from Heaven,’ written by scriptwriter and film director Majid Asoodegan, 40, and directed by animator and director Ali Noori Oskouee, 36, has reached the lineup for Animation Day in Cannes Film Festival, France.

Besides Oskouee’s film, co-produced by media producer Seyed Vahid Olyaee, the other entries are ‘Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles,’ directed by Spanish animator and character artist Salvador Simo; and ‘Junod’ directed by Japanese anime director Shinichiro Kimura.

The Iranian film will be screened on May 22 at 8pm, a day prior to Animation Day observed in the 70-year-old Cannes festival and slated for May 23.

The story of the film takes place in a war-ravaged land where a teacher named Sareh has to accompany two of her students on a life-changing journey, according to Roozrang online magazine of visual art (roozrang.com).

It is an enchanting mixed-technique animation which blurs the lines between imagination, storytelling and reality.

Sareh has to take two of her students to find their parents. Being a writer of comics, she tries to keep them calm on the perilous journey by telling them the latest story she has written, a story involving her own past. When the little group discovers a cave exactly like the one in Sareh’s stories, she finds out that the hero of her imagination is real. Determined to find him, she plays a hero herself in the eyes of her students.

‘Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles’ is a hand-drawn animation based on an early project in the career of Spanish film legend Luis Bunuel (1900-1983). The other film, ‘Junod’ is about the Swiss physician Marcel Junod (1904-1961) who arranged for the delivery of 15 tons of medicine and medical supplies to Hiroshima in Japan just after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city in August 6, 1945. Junod personally treated some of the victims.