Veteran documentarian opens Cinema Verite

Veteran Iranian documentarian Hossein Torabi has opened the 11th edition of the Cinema Verite, cutting the event’s cake.

Torabi cut the cake on Sunday morning at the Charsou Cinema Complex in Tehran.

The festival’s secretary Seyyed Mohammad-Mehdi Tabatabaei-Nezhad said it was decided not hold a routine opening ceremony for the 11th Cinema Verite.

“We gathered here to open the festival symbolically; however the screenings were started this morning,” he added.

Tabatabaei-Nezhad also noted that the documentary ‘For Freedom’ by Torabi is one the ten best documentaries in the world and Cinema Verite will screen its full version the next year.

“I hope Cinema Verite to show facts and the youth to be successful and make fine documentaries,” Torabi said.

Organized by the Documentary and Experimental Film Center (DEFC), the 11th Cinema Verite has been slated for December 10-17, 2017, in Tehran.

The DEFC is the largest center for production, distribution and promotion of documentary, animated and experimental pictures in the Middle East.

The Cinema Verite aims at protection of the nation's identity, promoting creative documentary, reinforcing the link between documentary cinema and social facts and events, introducing new global developments in documentary cinema, providing financial support for documentarians by distributing and screening their works in other festivals and removing hurdles to film production.

MG/MF