French fest screens Iranian doc ‘Starless Dreams’

A French film festival, Enfances Dans Le Monde, has screened Mehrdad Oskouei’s award-winning and much admired documentary ‘Starless Dreams’.

The 7th edition of the French event dubbed ‘Festival De Documentaires Enfances Dans Le Monde’ screened Oskouei's portrait of teenage inmates in the French capital.

‘Starless Dreams’ follows a group of under-18-year-old girls taken into a rehabilitation and detention center on the outskirts of Tehran for a variety of reasons ranging from drug dealing and trafficking to pick-pocketing and manslaughter.

Though bored with their incarcerated life they are, nevertheless, scared about what might happen to them once outside; as the New Year approaches, they all hope to celebrate it with their families.

Director Oskouei, one of Iran’s most prominent filmmakers, spent seven years securing access to this all-female facility, and he makes the awkwardness of being a male filmmaker in their environment a poignant and powerful aspect of his project.

The 76-minute doc has grabbed a number of prestigious awards and titles from various film events. Just in 2016, the film won the Amnesty International Film Prize at the 66th Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlinale-Generation 14plus in Germany as well as the True Vision Award at the 13th True/False Film Festival in the US.

Oskouei’s production has also received the Grierson Award for the best documentary at the 60th BFI London Film Festival and the Children’s Rights Award at the 31st Osnabruck Independent Film Festival in October.

The Festival De Documentaires Enfances Dans Le Monde aims to screen documentaries that highlight situations of children across the globe. It is only devoted to documentary films which give way to better understanding of diversity, experiences and real problems of children around the world.

The 7th edition of the French festival was held on November 16-18, 2017, in Paris.

MG/MMF