War, Family, Undertaker Films Win Verite Awards
TEHRAN.(Iranart) – T he 11th Iran International Documentary Film Festival Cinema Verite concluded on Sunday with a ceremony at Tehran’s Howzeh Honari (Art Bureau) where selected works were awarded.
The documentaries ‘Women With Gunpowder Earrings’ directed by Reza Farahmand and ‘Finding Farideh’ co-directed by Azadeh Mousavi and Kourosh Atai won the highest number of awards, ISNA reported.
Farahmand’s work is about Nour, a journalist who covers the plight of Syrian and Iraqi women and children in the war against the IS terrorists and mercenaries. The film received a diploma of honor and best director award.
‘Finding Farideh’ centers on an Iranian woman, based in the Netherlands, who was adopted by a Dutch couple 40 years ago. She returns to Iran in search of her biological parents. The film won awards for best editing, best score, diploma of honor and the secretary’s special award.
Film director Mohammad Reza Vatandoust received jury’s special award in the category of short and mid-length films for ‘Lotus’, a documentary about an old woman who is waiting for 12 years to revisit her home.
The best film in the category of short and mid-length films was ‘Hichkasestan’ (no one’s land) directed by Paris-based Iranian documentarian and editor Afsaneh Salari. Her work shows how luxuriously a funeral home in Lisbon, capital of Portugal, deals with dead bodies.
The best mid-length film award of the festival went to Spanish documentarian Alejandro G. Salgado for his ‘Bolingo, the Forest of Love’ about the journey made by several women from the heart of Africa to north Morocco looking for the “European dream”. It shows mothers fighting for survival and raising their children in hostile circumstances.
They end up at Bolingo, a camp near the Moroccan-Spanish border. Bolingo means love in Lingala; a language used by a group of Congolese people. Camp Bolingo was set up to house migrant women and their children until circumstances allowed them to cross the border into Europe.