Zurich fest to receive Iran feature

Iranian Film Festival of Zurich in Switzerland has slated to host Masoud Bakhshi’s acclaimed feature film ‘Yalda’.

Produced by Ali Mosaffa, ‘Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness’ will be running at the Feature Film competition section of the Sixth edition of the event.

The feature, which is a joint production of Iran, Switzerland, Germany, Lebanon and Luxembourg, follows the story of a young Iranian woman sentenced to death and seeking to obtain forgiveness from her accusers via a popular reality TV show.

Behnaz Jafari, Faqiheh Soltani, Fereshteh Sadr-Orafaee, Bahram Afshar, Fereshteh Hosseini and Babak Karimi are among the cast members of the flick.

The film has so far gained international recognition by attending a number of events and winning a number of awards, including the Grand Jury Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in the US.  

The 55th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic and the PyeongChang International Peace Film Festival in South Korea are two other events which will soon screen ‘Yalda’ in their competitive lineups.

The film is also set to premiere across Europe and America, beginning from September.

The IFFZ aims to fill the cultural gap between Iranians and Swiss as well as the many foreigners living in Switzerland.

The event defines itself as “A Platform for presenting the Iranian culture and tradition and for building a bridge between different cultures by the means of the universal language of art and especially the 7th art, cinema”.

This year’s edition of the festival will go online due to COVID-19 pandemic, to be held on May 28-June 03, 2020.

AA/FM