TEHRAN -- South Korean filmmaker Mo-young Jin’s “My Love, Don’t Cross That River”, about a couple who faces the last moment of their 76-year-old marriage, won the best award for feature documentary at the 9th Cinéma Vérité.

The documentary is about South Korean couple Jo Byeong-man and Kang Kye-yeol who are still completely, transcendentally in love with each other.

Despite their advancing ages (Jo is 98, while spring chicken Kang is 89), they still live unassisted in their remote home in the mountains, where they cook, gather firewood, have snow fights, and sleep with their hands entwined.

But Jo has been struggling with his health, and as his physical capabilities decrease, they must face the inevitable fact that they will one day soon be parted forever.

Winners of the Iranian international festival for documentary films were announced during a ceremony on Sunday evening at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall, where Cinema Organization of Iran Director Hojjatollah Ayyubi asked Iranian documentarians to focus on Iranian folk life during his short speech.

“A157”, Iran’s Soureh Pictures Company’s powerful documentary directed by Behruz Nuranipur about three Kurdish girls who became pregnant after being raped by members of ISIS, won the special jury award in the feature documentary category.

In the mid-length documentary section, “The Chechen Family”, Argentinean filmmaker Martín Solá’s documentary on an active participant in the Zikr, the ritual dance performed by Chechen Sufi Muslims, was crowned best film.

Italian filmmaker Francesco Dongiovanni was presented with the special jury award for his mid-length documentary “Giano” about one family’s old films found in a drawer in a big country house in Italy.

The award for best short documentary went to Iranian filmmaker Hamid Jafari’s “Stone” (“Bard”), which is about Maryam Nasiri, a woman who makes a living by quarrying stone from the nearby mountains in the southern Iranian town of Ramhormoz.

In the national section, the award for best feature documentary was shared by Mehrdad Oskui for “Daybreak Dreams”, on juveniles at an Iranian detention center, and Loqman Khaledi for “Pruning Season”, which is about an Iranian man who tries to prove his claim of having produced a drug against cancer.

“Life in Khor Musa” by Hojjat Taheri won the award for best mid-length documentary while “Roofs Covered with Snow” by Hayedeh Moradi received the award for best short documentary.

Photo: South Korean couple Jo Byeong-man (L) and Kang Kye-yeol in a scene from “My Love, Don’t Cross That River”

MMS/YAW
END