Iran scary short to vie in Japan

Internationally acclaimed Iranian short ‘Divinity’ (Malakout) has been picked to attend the Hiroshima International Animation Festival in Japan.

Farnoush Abedi’s award-winning short will be among the 59 selected shorts to compete at the 18th edition of the Japanese film event.

“The angle of death has come to reap the life of a pianist’s wife. The man, however, makes a deal with the angle to give his hands to save her life”, reads a brief synopsis for the short.

The published tagline for ‘Divinity’ reads, “Music was his passion… Love was his masterpiece…”.

The 11-minute film has already attended a number of film events and won awards, including the Special Mention Short award at the Silk Road International Film Festival in Ireland and the Best Animation award at the Black Country Horror Shorts Film Festival in the UK.

Soon, the short will attend some other global events such as the Tulipoff Int’l Film Festival in Denmark, the Shanghai Int’l Film Festival in China and the “In the Palace” Short Film Festival in Bulgaria.

Qualified as an Academy Award Short Film Festival, the Hiroshima International Animation Festival is “a biennial manifestation dedicating to the advancement of visual media art culture in general, by promoting international cross-cultural exchanges through the development of animation art.”

Due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, the event will be held on August 20-24, 2020 without the presence of the audience but Japanese jury members only.

The list of the winners will be announced on August 24, coinciding with the last day of the festival.

AA/FM