Iranian films line up for Lucknow festival in India - Tehran Times

Iranian films in various categories will be competing in the 5th International Children’s Film Festival, which will be held in Lucknow, India from April 19 to 25.

                                                                    JAFAR PANAHI

He was born on 11 July, 1960 in Mianeh, Iran. He is an Iranian filmmaker and is one of the most influential filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave movement.

Jafar Panahi was ten years old when he wrote his first book, which subsequently won the first prize in a literary competition. At the same age, he became familiar with film making. He shot films on 8mm film, acting in one and assisting in the making of another. Later, he took up photography. During his military service, Panahi served in the Iran–Iraq War (1980-90) and made a documentary about the war during this period.

After studying film directing at the College of Cinema and Television in Tehran, Panahi made several films for Iranian television and was the assistant director of Abbas Kiarostami’s film Through the Olive Trees (1994). Since that time, he has directed several films and won numerous awards in international film festivals.

Panahi’s first feature film came in 1995, entitled White Balloon. This film won a Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His second feature film, The Mirror, received the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival. His most notable offering to date has been The Circle (2000), which criticized the treatment of women under Iran’s Islamist regime. Jafar Panahi won the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival for The Circle, which was named FIPRESCI Film of the Year at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, and appeared on Top 10 lists of critics worldwide.

Panahi also directed Crimson Gold in 2003, which brought him the UN Certain Regard Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival. During that time Panahi was detained in the JFK airport, New York, while taking a connection from Hong Kong to Montevideo, after refusing to be photographed and fingerprinted by the immigration police. After being chained and waiting for several hours, he was finally sent back to Hong Kong.

He has gained recognition from film theorists and critics worldwide and received numerous awards including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

                                                                                                                                  MUNTAZREE

                                                          

                                                             Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Filmmaker, novelist, screenwriter, editor, producer, human right activist

He was born in southern Tehran May 29, 1957. In his teen years, he fought against the dictatorship in Iran and was injured by bullet shots by the police and spent some five years in prison as a political prisoner.

The revolution that freed him from prison also unleashed his creative energies. He started story writing whilst in prison and turned to filmmaking. Currently there are 27 books published from Mohsen Makhmalbaf as a ground-breaking writer.

Nasouh Repentance, about a bank clerk who seeks true repentance while facing death. This was the first in a trilogy of highly didactic films with strong religious themes and poor cinematic quality.  Makhmalbaf became a controversial figure when the two films he made in 1991, A Time of Love and The Nights of the Zayandeh-Rood were banned for dealing with physical love and raising doubts about the revolution.

One year before the September 11th incident took place with his film “Kandahar”, premiered in Cannes film festival 2001, he put Afghanistan into the map before any other media. Mohsen Makhmalbaf is the winner of more than 30 prominent international awards including the Legion d’honneur Medallion form France as well as The Best Asian Filmmaker of the world award from Pusan International Film Festival. He became the Dean of the Asian Film Academy in 2007.

Makhmalbaf taught cinema to his family. His older daughter the celebrated Samira Makhmalbaf with her films The Apple, The Blackboards & At Five in The Afternoon (all premiered in Cannes Film Festival). His younger daughter Hana Makhmalbaf with Joy of Madness (premiered in Venice Film Festival) & Buddha Collapsed out Of Shame (screened in Berlin international film festival). His son Maysam Makhmalbaf with “How Samira Made the Blackboard” and his wife Marziyeh Meshkini the director of “The Day I Became A Woman” & “Stray Dogs” premiered at Venice Film Festival.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf filmmaking is not limited to his country. He has the experience of shooting films in different regions including: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Iran. Films by the Makhmalbaf family have been screened in over 50 countries and been shown more than 2000 times at the festivals all over the world and have taken some 110 international awards.

Makhmalbaf in addition to filmmaking lived in Afghanistan for a period of two years and succeeded in carrying out 82 human rights projects. This included the building of schools in the towns of Herat and Zaranj and the teaching of cinema, as well as helping to set up the Afghan cinema, which had been totally destroyed during the Taliban regime.