The 18th edition of Hafez Cinema and TV Celebration was held Monday in Milad Tower in Tehran where the 2017 drama “Subdued” directed and produced by Hamid Nematollah was the big winner receiving six awards.
As the first private cinematic celebration, the annual event presents the Hafez Statuette to the best in Iranian film and television.
The program began by paying tribute to film producer and editor-in-chief of Donya-e-Tasvir (Picture World) magazine Ali Moallem, the founder of the festival who passed away last March.
The six accolades for Subdued included best screenplay (Masoumeh Bayat), best sound track (Sohrab Pournazeri) and award for best singer (Homayoun Shajarian), as well as the best film award (Hamid Nematollah).
Leila Hatami and Kourosh Tahami who play the leading roles in Subdued shared the best actress and best actor awards respectively with Parinaz Izad-Yar for her role in “Villa Dwellers” and Hadi Hejazifar for his role in “Lottery”.
Lottery also won the award for best editing (Sajjad Pahlavanzadeh and Hossein Jamshidi) while “Asphyxia” received two awards, best cinematography (Masoud Salami) and best director (Fereydoun Jeyrani).
The animation “The Elephant King” directed by Hadi Mohammadian received the best art and technical achievement award.
The Abbas Kiarostami Statuette, introduced to the festival in last edition after the death of the globally renowned filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, was granted to Asghar Yousefinejad, director of the feature film “Home”.
Veteran theater director Ali Rafiee, 80, was honored for a lifetime of artistic career in performing arts and received the Hafez Statuette.
TV Section
In the TV Section, romantic and historical drama series “Shahrzad” was appreciated the most with three awards: the best drama actor award went to Mehdi Soltani, the best drama actress to Roya Nonahali and best director award to Hassan Fat’hi.
The series was released for home video screening in three seasons. When released in 2015, the first season of Shahrzad commanded unprecedented popularity among Iranians and became the most successful series among the works released in home video network. However, the second and third seasons fell short.
Popular comedy TV show “The Capital” received two awards for its fifth season aired in March. The awards included best screenplay for Mohsen Tanabandeh, Khashayar Alvand and Amirhossein Qasemi as well as best comedy actor for Bahram Afshari.
However, the award of best comedy actress was granted to Roya Mir-Elmi for her performance in the second season of “The Bachelor-Degree Holders”.
Mehran Modiri was recognized as the most popular TV figure for his show “Get-Together”.
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