Russian DOKer awards Iranian ‘Unrest’

The Moscow International Documentary Film Festival – DOKer in Russia has awarded Iranian short flick ‘Unrest’.

Directed by Mohammad-Sadeq Esmaeeli, the Russian gala picked the Iranian documentary as the best short.

‘Unrest’ is about a 14-year-old teenager who runs away from the house of his addicted father who forces him to live in an orphanage.

Now he is trying hard to find his absent mother just for the first time. Additionally, he does not have an ID card and this is causing many problems in his daily life.

A jury composed of Vladimir Golovnev from Russia, Camila Rodriguez Triana from Columbia and Fariz Ahmedov from Azerbaijan selected the winners at the short competition.

Dejan Petrovic’s ‘Adjusting’ from Serbia, Andrea Grasselli’s ‘Zenerù’ from Italy, and Lidia Rikker’s ‘The Dream #9-2380 (IK-6)’ from Russia won special mentions in the same section.

In the feature competition, the award for the best film went to ‘Mr. Tang’, a sensitive film about love and resistance, by Chinese filmmakers Xia Su and Hongyu Su.

Sergey Dvortsevoy from Russia, Zoe Schmederer from Germany, and Ammar Aziz from Pakistan were the jury members at this category.

The award for the best director was presented to Victoria Fiore for ‘Hide and Seek’ (Nascondino), a film on the life of a nine-year-old boy and his grandmother in Naples, from Italy and the UK.

Dutch filmmaker Maasja Ooms received the audience award for ‘Jason’, a film about struggles with the psychological effects of a traumatic childhood.

The Moscow International Documentary Film Festival – DOKer screens independent non-fiction films.

The DOKer is aimed at “analyzing and screening various genres and forms of the world's documentaries as a separate line of cinema in all its esthetic and socio-cultural diversity,” according to an online submission platform.

The 10th edition of the DOKer was held on August 15-24.

MG/MG