‘Lunch Time’ to vie at Academy Award qualifying filmfest

Iranian short film ‘Lunch Time’ directed by Alireza Qasemi has been selected to go on screen at the 42nd Atlanta Film Festival in the US.

The 15-minute ‘Lunch Time’ is about a high school girl who has come to the hospital to identify the body of her mother. The people in charge at the hospital would not let her into the morgue because of her young age.

It has gone on screen at a number of international film festivals, including the 15th London Short Film Festival in the UK, the 26th Saint Louis International Film Festival in the US, the 23rd James River Short Film Festival in the US, the 6th annual Jozi Film Festival in South Africa, the 18th Calgary International Film Festival in Canada, the Palm Springs International ShortFest in the US, the Mill Valley Film Festival in the US, the 36th Fajr Film Festival in Iran, and the 61st BFI London Film Festival in the UK.

The short has been nominated for a Palme d’Or at the 70th Cannes Film Festival in France and received several awards from the Student International Film Festival in Croatia, the Ojai Film Festival in the US, the 2017 James River Short Films competition in the US, the Calgary International Film Festival in Canada, the 5th Porto Alegre Screenwriting Festival – FRAPA in Brazil, the 6th Pachuca Film Festival in Mexico, the 2017 Snakes Alley Festival of Film in the US, and the 4th Flamingo Film Festival in the US.

Among the cast members of ‘Lunch Time’ are Khorshid Cheraqipour, Roya Bakhtiari, Amir Taqdiri, Peyman Naemi, Siavash Cheraqipour, Bahram Omrani, Pouria Akhavan, Mohammad Haddadi, Alireza Qasemi, Mehdi Yeganeh, and Arash Qasemi.

It is the 12th Academy Award qualifying presence of 'Lunch Time' and the Atlanta Film Festival is one of only two-dozen Academy Award qualifying festivals in the US.

The festival is one of the largest and longest-running festivals in the country, welcoming an audience of nearly 25,000 to discover hundreds of new independent, international, animated, documentary, and short films, selected from more than 3,000 submissions from all over the world.

The Atlanta Film Festival screenings often include in-person dialog with filmmakers, providing audiences, artists and industry professionals with meaningful opportunities to network, interact and engage.

The 42nd edition of the US event is slated for April 13-22, 2018.

MG/MF