Turkish festival screening Iranian ‘Man of Integrity’

The 7th edition of the Istanbul International Crime and Punishment Film Festival (ICAPFF) in Turkey has screened Iran’s ‘A Man of Integrity’ by Mohammad Rasoulof.

The festival screened the Iranian flick in “The Scale of Justice” section on November 3 at the Atlas Sineması and will display it once again on November 9 at City’s Nişantaşı.

‘A Man of Integrity’ (AKA Lerd) is a 117-minute fiction about a man who refuses to bribe his way out of trouble caused by powerful economic and political forces.

Reza, having distanced himself from the urban quagmire, leads a simple life along with his wife and sole son, somewhere in a remote village in Northern Iran. He spends his days working in his gold fish farm.

Nearby, a private company with close links to the government and local authorities has taken control of nearly every aspect of regional life. Its shareholders, accumulating wealth, power and economic rents, have been pushing local farmers and small owners to dilapidate their belongings, farms and estates, to the benefit of the company’s influential network and its monopoly.

It is under their pressure that many villagers themselves have become local rings of the larger network of corruption.

Reza Akhlaqirad, Soudabeh Beizaee, and Nasim Adabi star in the film that has been screened at a number of prestigious global events, including Sydney Film Festival, Midnight Sun Film Festival, New Horizons International Film Festival, the Bogota International Film Festival in Colombia, the Film Festival Gent in Belgium, the Batumi International Art-House Film Festival in Georgia, the 22nd Busan International Film Festival in South Korea and the 70th Cannes Film Festival in France, the latter of which bestowed the Un Certain Regard award on the film.

With the significant contribution of the staff at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law at Istanbul University in cooperation with filmmakers, cinema artists, directors, writers, critics, academics, businessmen, and governmental and non-governmental organizations, the ICAPFF explores important societal themes from the perspectives of the cinema art and science.

The 7th edition of the ICAPFF is slated for November 3-9, 2017.

MG/AI