‘Breath’ to stand for Iran at 90th Academy Awards

Iran has selected the drama ‘Breath’ by female director Narges Abyar as the country’s official submission at the best foreign language film category of the 90th edition of the Academy Awards in the US.

Iran’s Farabi Cinema Foundation assigned nine cinema professionals at a committee to choose the county’s representative at the Oscars.

Talking to media on Tuesday, the committee’s spokesman Amir Esfandiari said “The movie ‘Breath’ has been selected with the majority of votes.”

The film has been selected in a race with ‘Subdued’ directed by Hamid Nematollah, ‘Malaria’ directed by Parviz Shahbazi, and ‘The Villa Residents’ directed by Monir Qeidi.

The committee has been comprised of four directors, an actor, a composer, a producer, a film critic, and a cinema official.

‘Breath’ shows how hopes and dreams of many Iranian children shattered by the flames of the war that Iraq lit in 1980.

The story of the film begins in the late 1970s in a suburb of Karaj, where Bahar, Nader, Kamal and Maryam live with numerous colorful dreams of their childhood along with their father and granny. The mother of the household, however, has died a few years ago.

The father, who suffers from asthma, works for a shoemaking company. In her dreams, Bahar, who narrates the story of the film, wishes to treat him when she becomes a doctor.

Iranian actors and actresses Gelare Abbasi, Mehran Ahmadi, Jamshid Hashempour, and Shabnam Moqaddami star in ‘Breath’.

The flick won a number of Crystal Simorghs, including the one for Best Film with National View at the 34th edition of the Fajr Film Festival in February, 2016, in Tehran. It has also been honored at various international cinematic events.

Former Iran submissions to the Oscars have brought the country four nominations and two awards, including Asghar Farhadi’s Best Foreign Language Film awards for ‘A Separation’ and ‘The Salesman’, respectively in 2012 and 2017.

The Oscars is an annual US awards ceremony to honor cinematic achievements in the film industry.

The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, or Oscars, handed out annually by the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

The award is given to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a primarily non-English dialogue track.

MG/MG