Cinema Verite to review Esteghlal record

The 12th edition of the Cinema Verite, Iran's international documentary film festival, has scheduled to review Esteghlal FC history in ‘Blue as Sky’ on Monday.

Directed by Amir Rafiee and written by Khashayar Alvand, ‘Blue as Sky’ is a documentary about the history of Tehran’s Esteghlal Football Club since its establishment in 1945.

A number of famous Iranian artists, including Homayoun Ershadi, Mahnaz Afshar, Siamak Ansari, Farhad Aslani, Hamid-Reza Azarang, Babak Hamidiyan, and Reza Yazdani have appeared in the doc.

Esteghlal FC is an Iranian professional football club based in Tehran.

It is the most successful Iranian club, currently competes in Iran's top flight Persian Gulf Pro League and Iranian FA Cup.

Esteghlal has won more than 35 official and regional trophies making them Iran's most decorated and most successful football club. The club has won 15 national titles which are eight Iranian leagues and a record of seven FA cup.

Esteghlal's international titles are two championships in AFC Champions League making it Iran's most successful club in Asian football and third in AFC Champions League.

Soureh in Isfahan, Shahid Avini in Bushehr, Setareh Baran in Tabriz, Howzeh Honari in Sari, and Golestan in Shiraz as well as Charsou in Tehran are the cinema halls to host the event.

Organized by the Documentary and Experimental Film Center, the first edition of the Cinema Verite was held in 2007.

Over the past decade it has emerged as one of the important events on Iran's documentary film calendar.

The Cinema Verite aims at protecting the nation's identity, promoting creative documentary, reinforcing the link between documentary cinema and social facts and events, introducing new global developments in documentary cinema, providing financial support for documentarians by distributing and screening their works in other festivals and removing hurdles to film production.

The 12th edition of the Cinema Verite is slated for December 9-16, 2018.

MG/AG