Serbian ÍRÁN:CI picks Iranian ‘Castle of Dreams’

The 9th edition of the ÍRÁN:CI film festival in Serbia has picked ‘Castle of Dreams’ for the Audience Award.

Directed and produced by Reza Mirkarimi, the film tells the story of a 42-year-old father of two. He unintentionally kills a relative. A court of law rules the murder was accidental.

Getting out of prison, he leaves his wife and kids and moves to another city. After a while, the father must go back to his hometown as his wife is brain-dead.

He has to take his son and daughter away from their mother who is hospitalized. Although reluctant, he tries every means to fulfill the children’s fantasy of building a dream castle that was drawn by their mother.

A starring role of the film has been portrayed by Hamed Behdad who won the Best Actor award from the 22nd Shanghai International Film Festival in China.

The 86-minute film brought Mirkarimi the Best Director award and the highest prize at the Shanghai film event. The title recently won Best Film and Best Director awards at the 18th Dhaka International Film Festival in Bangladesh.

‘Castle of Dreams’ also received the awards for best film and best director at the Batumi International Art-House Film Festival in Georgia as well as the Simorgh Crystal awards for Best Screenplay and Best Music at the 2019 Fajr Film Festival in Iran.

It won some other awards at events such as the 4th Slemani International Film Festival in Iraq, the 23rd Family Film Awards in the US, the 20th Italian Asiatica Film Festival, the 56th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival in Turkey, the 39th Cambridge Film Festival in the UK, and a nomination at the 13th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) in Australia.

The film has hit the screen at several global events, including the 20th Asiatica Film Festival in Italy, the 9th Iranian Film Festival Australia, the 2019 Rabat International Festival of Film in Morocco, the 43rd Sao Paulo International Film Festival in Brazil, the 2019 Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia, the 24th International Film Festival of Kerala in India and the 20th Tbilisi International Film Festival in Georgia.

It is now in competition at the 12 Sofia MENAR Film Festival underway in the Bulgarian capital.

ifilm has interviewed the actor Behdad, the actresses Zhila Shahi, Youna Tadayyon and Niousha Alipour, as well as the director of ‘Castle of Dreams’. Click here to watch the report.

The 9th ÍRÁN:CI, the Festival of Iranian Films, was held on January 15-19 in Prague and on January 21-22 in Brno.

The event continued on January 23-25 in Košice and will move on to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia where it wraps up January 31.

MG/AG