‘Salesman’, ‘Subdued’ Big Winners at Cinema Celebration

On the occasion of National Day of Cinema in Iran (Sept. 12), the 19th celebration of House of Cinema was held in Tehran and the best movies released locally last year were awarded.

Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning ‘The Salesman’ was the big winner of the night, collecting seven prizes including the top awards of the best film, best director and best screenplay for Farhadi as well as the best actor and supporting actor awards for Shahab Hosseini and Farid Sajadi Hosseini respectively, honaronlinre reported.

‘Subdued’ directed by Hamid Nematollah was another big winner with five prizes including the best actress award for Leila Hatami.

A surprising point about the awards was that two celebrated films in the past year Narges Abyar’s ‘Breath’ and Mahammad Hossein Mahdavian’s ‘Midday Adventure’ which had 10 and 8 nominations respectively did not win a single award.

Both films have won several national awards, are acclaimed by local critics and were welcomed by the public when they were released in Iran; however, none of them could convince the jury that they too deserved an award.