Cinema Vérité honors Farshad Fadaeean

The 14th edition of the Cinema Vérité, Iran’s major international documentary festival, has held a commemorating ceremony for veteran Iranian documentarian Farshad Fadaeean.

The gala honored the documentarian with a lifetime achievement award during a ceremony on Friday.

Fadaeean could not attend the ceremony due to his illness; so his son, Faraz, received the award on behalf of his father.

Delivering a brief speech, the son said “My father is not used to talking much about himself. I love his ‘Stone, Mother, Silent’ and I think it is a really powerful film.”

“We usually talk about cinema, and it is about six years that I have been working with him next to his camera, but I cannot understand him much, because he is a very complex person,” Faraz added.

He also noted that his father travels a lot, adding “He suddenly picks up his camera and goes on a journey. We went on a journey before the outbreak of coronavirus and he began to film the region and the people there.”

“His main characteristics are that he lives with his work. After the spread of coronavirus, I asked him to come and live with me. The very first two months were very hard for him, but later we began to walk every night. He made ‘Sketches of Living in Quarantine’ after I asked him to a make documentary about the quarantine days,” Faraz concluded.

‘Sketches of Living in Quarantine’ is about what happened over the five months after the detection the first COVID-19 cases in Iran. The documentary was reviewed during a special program at the festival.

Earlier, the Cinema Vérité organizers announced that a selection of documentaries praised at the 2020 edition of several international events would be reviewed during a special section titled “World’s Best”.

The international section of the festival contains several non-competition sections such Special Displays, Mirror of a Festival, Portrait, Perspective of One Country Documentary Cinema, Chile Documentary Cinema, Masters of 2020, and 13 Editions & 13 Films.

The 14th Cinema Vérité, being held online due to the coronavirus outbreak, opened in Tehran on Tuesday and will come to an end on December 22.

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