TEHRAN – Iranian films “Balora” and “Kal Fatemeh” have won prizes at the Apricot Tree Ujan International Documentary Film Festival, the organizers announced on Monday in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.

Directed by Abdolqader Khaledi, “Balora” won the special jury prize in the short documentary competition.

In this documentary, Khaledi and his crew are looking for people who may have information about a particular style of old and forgotten Kurdish singing called Balora.

In times when there were no means of mass communication, this form of singing was also used to communicate with other people in the mountains. 

Balora has had aspects of romance, satire, and humor, as well as a description of the death of a hero, the extent of which depends on the taste, imagination and skill of the poet, since there is a strong element of improvisation. 

Performing it requires special skills because it requires the coordination of the fingers and proper breathing while singing. Through this form of singing, Kurdish women have cried out their desires, aspirations, and sufferings, not in a quiet and secretive voice but in a loud and free voice in the mountains. This film reflects some of these cries.

“Kal Fatemeh” by Mehdi Zamanpur Kiasari received Martin Adoyan Award.

The film was screened in the feature-length documentary category.

It is about Kal Fatemeh, a woman who lives on her own farm away from the village with her two sons. She runs a farm and rears cattle for a living, meeting many challenges. She grieves over her daughter’s situation, as she has had an unhappy past.

Iranian film scholar Leila Hosseini was a member of the jury, which also had Armenian film critic Sara Nalbandyan and Bulgarian filmmaker Zlatina Rousseva.

“Elsewhere, Everywhere” by Isabelle Ingold and Vivianne Perelmuter from Belgium won the grand prize in the feature-length competition.

The film is about a young man in a room somewhere in England. On a computer screen, images from all over the world. One click is all it takes to cross borders. But it’s the tale of another journey that we witness unfolding in bits and pieces, that of Shahin.

The grand prize in the short film competition went to “Spirits and Rocks: an Azorean Myth”, a co-production between Switzerland and Portugal directed Aylin Gökmen.

The special jury prize in the feature-length competition was given to “Strip and War”, a Belarus-Poland co-production directed by Andrei Kutsila.

Photo: Iranian documentary “Balora” directed by Abdolqader Khaledi.

MMS