Iranian ‘Asphyxia’ to go to Polish New Horizons

Iranian feature ‘Asphyxia’ has been selected to go on screen at the 18th edition of the New Horizons International Film Festival in Poland.

The Polish event will screen the Iranian film ‘Asphyxia’, directed by Fereydoun Jeyrani, three times on July 27, July 31 and August 5.

"Masoud’s wife suffers from nervous tensions and he has to take her to the psychiatric hospital,” A brief synopsis for the film read.

Elnaz Shakerdoust, Mahaya Petrosian, Pardis Ahmadieh, Gholam-Hossein Lotfi, Ehsan Amani, Asadollah Yekta and Poulad Kimyaei are also in the cast.

In a recent website article on the Hollywood Reporter, the Iranian film ‘Asphyxia’ was compared to a Hitchcockian thriller with “all the suspense and slow-burn” of a classic film.

“Winter is coming in Iranian writer-director Fereydoun Jeyrani’s icy monochrome murder-mystery," it wrote, adding the film pits Sahra’s (played by Elnaz Shakerdoust) lowly situation against an apartment block’s imminent demolition, which will ultimately leave her homeless.

“Jeyrani’s elegant black-and-white thriller refracts Iranian society through the prism of a twisty Hitchcockian noir,” film critic, Jessica Kiang, wrote in Variety.

“Creating Gothic texture and intricate noir plotting in the age of cell phones and intercoms is no easy task. But Jeyrani imagines a Tehran of thunderous snowstorms and power outages, where a phone’s torch app becomes as atmospheric a source of light as a guttering gas lamp, while the solo instruments of Karen Homayounfar’s moody score pick out nervous melodies over minimalist backgrounds,” she added.

Launched in 2001, the New Horizons Film Festival is an international event held annually in July and/or August in Wrocław, Poland.

It is one of the biggest and most popular film festivals in Poland. The festival mainly presents art-house cinema. The most important from the several competitions held at the festival is the "New horizons international competition".

It aims to present bold, unconventional and uncompromising films that are searching for the new forms of expression – "the new horizons of cinema".

The 2018 edition of the New Horizons is slated for July 26-August 5.

MG/MMF