Watch ifilm's exclusive report on the Iranian feature animation ‘Holy Cast’ directed by Mohammad-Amin Hamedani.
Character designer and technical manager of the animated movie are Mohammad Kheirandish and Mostafa Shah-Mardani, respectively.
Below are highlights of the report.
ifilm: Cinematic animation is considering something new in Iran, but they have been able to keep up the pace with the animation technology in the world. Today we’re going to talk about a notable animation – it is called ‘Holy Cast’ – and it is directed by Mohammad-Amin Hamedani.
Mohammad-Amin Hamedani: Unlike many animations that are made for children, ‘Holy Cast’ is made for teenagers and young adults.
Certainly we’ve addressed teenagers and young adults. Why do we say teenagers? Because there are some topics regarding teenagers and they are some sort of exaggerations based on realities.
We call this technique hyper-realistic. Teenagers have an advantage over children and that is they understand exaggeration and creativity, which are the main factors of animation.
At the same time, they live in reality. I mean, all the physical and organic events of this exaggeration should be taken into consideration. I mean a scientific exaggeration.
ifilm: Those who have gone and seen this animation believe that it can go on and compete with the animations that have been made across the world; but also some people have criticized it.
Mohammad-Amin Hamedani: Many times, it’s criticized for being similar to foreign projects or is a copy of foreign ones.
ifilm: The story happens in the city of Najran and the characters have special facial features.
Mohammad Kheirandish: First, the story happens in Najran, a city in Yemen. Yemen is somehow related to such works.
Back then, during the time of Prophet Solomon, they had jinns, demons, and fairies, which had appeared. This was a base for us to be able to use some special facial features.
Based on the research the scriptwriter had done about characters and based on the director’s guidelines, we were made to show the characters like this.
AI/AG