Cinema Verite to honor 3 Iranian documentarians

Three veteran Iranian documentarians are to be commemorated at the 14th Iran’s major international festival for documentary films known as Cinema Verite.    

The list includes Kamran Shirdel, Mahvash Sheikholeslami and Farshad Fadaiyan.  

Born in 1939 in Tehran, Kamran Shirdel is a graduate in architecture and urbanism at the University of Rome and film direction at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia of Rome. He worked as an assistant director with American film director and actor John Huston on ‘The Bible’. He returned to Iran and started his career in 1965. Shirdel is the founder and director of the Kish International Documentary Film Festival which is held yearly in the January in Kish Island in the Persian Gulf.  

Shirdel is the producer of more than 130 films and is also the winner of several awards from different films festivals in Iran, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Italy, etc.

The 74-year-old Sheikholeslami graduated from Cinema School in London. She has so far produced several TV series and documentaries.  

Farshad Fadaiyan has worked as a photographer, documentary filmmaker, editor, producer and director. He has also produced over 70 documentary films.

The pandemic in Tehran has pushed back the start of the festival one week to December 15.

The festival will run in different sections, including National, International, and Martyr Avini Prize, Entrepreneurship Documentary Competition, CoronaVirus Special Section, Side Sections and commemorations.

The national competition section comprises the short, mid-length and feature-length documentaries while the international section of this edition of Cinema Verite will be held in non-competition format due to the spread of coronavirus.

The international section of the festival also enjoys various non-competition sections such as Special Displays, Mirror of a Festival, Portrait, Perspective of One Country Documentary Cinema, Chile Documentary Cinema, Masters of 2020 as well as 13 Editions & 13 Films.

A number of top Iranian and international documentarians and critics will be holding online workshops and panel discussions during the festival.

International figures to attend the online event include Betsy A. McLane, Bill Nichols and James Bertrand Longley along with famous Iranian documentarians Mehrdad Oskoee and Farhad Varahram.

The festival will be running totally online on December 15-22.

MM/FM