Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi, whose movies take the audience on a journey through the Palestinian cities past and present, will be the special guest at the Broken Olive Branches section of the 36th Fajr International Film Festival, April 19-27, in Tehran.
Masharawi was born in Gaza in 1962 into a family of refugees from Jaffa. He grew up in the Shati Refugee Camp. He lives and works in Ramallah, where he founded the Cinema Production and Distribution Center in 1996 with the aim of promoting local film productions. He also sponsors a mobile cinema, which allows him to screen films in Palestinian refugee camps, the festival website wrote.
His other undertakings include the annual Kids Film Festival and workshops on film production and directing. Masharawi regularly organizes readings and discussion forums at the Al-Matal cultural center.
With documentaries and feature films, he has also made a name for himself as a film artist. He has received several awards. In the 1994 Cannes International Film Festival he was awarded the UNESCO Film Award for ‘Curfew’ (1994), and received the audience and critics’ prize for the best film at the Montpellier Film Festival. His ‘Haifa’ (1996) and ‘A Ticket to Jerusalem’ (2002) also won several awards.
Ahad Mikaeelzadeh, manager of Broken Olive Branches section of the FIFF, says a number of films about the Palestinian resistance will be screened this year at the festival.
The non-competitive section will screen more than 10 feature films, and the conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Myanmar are also the subjects that run through several entries in this year’s event. The lineup will include documentaries and dramas from Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Turkey. There will also be Q&A sessions after the screenings attended by international delegates and filmmakers.
Masharawi will attend this year’s event with his latest movie ‘Writing on Snow’. The film is an attempt to deal with ideological, political and geographic divisions in Palestine and the Arab world.
The film has actors and actresses from different Arab countries including Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon in the cast.
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