Canberra to host 7th Iran film festival

Canberra has set to host the 7th edition of the Iranian Film Festival Australia (IFFA) in November 2017.

To be opened on November 18, Saturday, in Arc Cinema NFSA, the festival will screen six movies selected from the best recent productions of the Iranian cinema industry.

The lineup includes ‘Subdued’ directed by Hamid Nematollah, ‘Blockage’ directed by Mohsen Qaraei, and ‘Israfil’ directed by Ida Panahandeh.

The list goes on with ‘Breath’ directed by Narges Abyar, ‘Leila’ directed by Daryoush Mehrjoui, and ‘Take Me Home’ by the late-great filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.

‘Israfil’ is about a widow who loses her only son. Her teenage sweetheart, who had left Iran following the scandal of his relationship with her, appears at the funeral. The relationship shows signs of resuming, but the sweetheart now has a much younger fiancé. On the horns of these emotional entanglements, the three characters have to make decisions not only about their emotions, but also their future lives.

‘Blockage’ tells the story of Ghasem, who is an unsympathetic and opportunistic man working at the Tehran Municipality to police illegal street vendors. While he’s about to be fired for corrupt dealings and counting on his wife’s inheritance to buy a truck, the wife wants to buy a house so they can move from Ghasem’s father’s home.

In ‘Leila’, a newly married and deeply in love couple discover that the wife is unable to conceive. So the husband's mother convinces her daughter-in-law that Reza must take a second wife to produce a child.

‘Subdued’ is about a recently divorced woman who struggles to maintain an independent life with no supportive family. She eventually finds a job in a restaurant. A friendship between her and the manager gradually becomes something more. It’s the beginning of a tumultuous emotional journey.

‘Breath’ narrates the story of a young girl who lives in Yazd with her father and her grandmother. It’s turbulent times in the real world - first the Iranian Revolution and then the long and bitter Iran-Iraq war. But the girl always has her head in a book and retreats into her own dreams and fantasies to try to make sense of the world around her.

The IFFA is an independent cultural establishment that was founded in 2010 in Australia.

“Now in its seventh year, Iranian Film Festival Australia is the only nationwide Australian festival dedicated to Iranian cinema and forging cultural understanding between Iran and Australia,” the festival’s website wrote.

The 7th edition of the IFFA is slated for October 26-November 19, 2017, to take place in six major Australian cities.

The Canberra part of the festival is scheduled to come to end on Sunday, November 19, 2017.

MG/AI