‘Rona, Azim’s Mother’ wins Egyptian award

Iran-Afghanistan coproduction ‘Rona, Azim’s Mother’ has won best film award at the 3rd edition of the Sharm el-Sheikh Asian Film Festival (SAFF) in Egypt.

Directed and written by Jamshid Mahmoudi, the 89-minute flick narrates the story of Azim, an Afghan refugee who lives in Tehran along with his family and works at Tehran municipality at night.

Being the family’s head, he must choose between his own life and his mother’s whom he claims is the most important one in his life, as he found out that she is in dire need of kidney transplant.

The film stars Mohsen Tanabandeh, Mojtaba Pirzadeh, Fatemeh Hosseini, Fereshteh Hosseini and Fatemeh Mirzaee.

The film has previously succeeded to win Kim Jiseok Award at the 23rd Busan International Film Festival in South Korea. It also grabbed two awards at the Diorama International Film Festival in India last month.

‘Rona, Azim’s Mother’ recently received the Grand Prix of the International Jury and the INALCO (Asian Studies University in Paris) award at the 25th Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema in France and went on screen at the 29th Annual Festival of Films from Iran in Chicago, the US.

The SAFF is a cultural event held in Sharm el-Sheikh with the support of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, The Ministry of Youth and Sports, The General Authority for Tourism Development and the South Sinai Governorate.

The festival hosts an annual contest for film-makers and films. The 2019 edition of the event aims to introduce Asian cinema to the Arab world.

The 2019 SAFF was held in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh on March 2-8.

MG/AG