TEHRAN – The 2022 Iran Cinema Festival (Festival Cinemas d’Iran) has unveiled its lineup.

The ninth edition of the festival, which will be held in Paris from June 22 to 28, will open with a screening of Saeid Rustai’s latest drama, “Leila’s Brothers”.

The film follows Leila, a young woman who has dedicated her whole life to her parents and her four brothers. Heavily impacted by an unprecedented economic crisis, the family is crumbling under debt and tearing itself apart as personal disillusionment occurs.

Having its premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the film won the FIPRESCI Prize, the International Film Critics award, at the Cannes Film Festival. 

Director Ahmad Bahrami’s acclaimed drama “The Wasteland” is another highlight of the lineup.
 
The story of the film is set in a remote brick manufacturing factory producing bricks using an ancient method. Many families with different ethnicities work in the factory and the boss seems to hold the key to solving their problems. Forty-year-old Lotfollah, who was born on-site, is the factory supervisor and acts as a go-between for the workers and the boss. The boss has Lotfollah gather all the workers in front of his office. He wants to talk to them about the shutdown of the factory. All that matters now to Lotfollah is to keep Sarvar unharmed, the woman he has been in love with for a long time.

Winner of the grand prize at the 36th Venice International Film Critics’ Week, “Zalava” will be also screened.

Directed by Arsalan Amiri, the film is set in 1978 in a small village called “Zalava”, where the villagers claim that a demon is among them.

A military official’s skepticism gets a rude awakening when he travels to the village in this chilling, critically acclaimed Iranian tale of the line between faith and paranoia.

Mohammad Kart’s directorial debut “Drown” has also been chosen to be screened. After a video of Parvaneh’s class in a women-only swimming pool is leaked, she is brutally murdered by her husband, Hashem, who then seeks a way to redeem his reputation and dignity as the godfather in the neighborhood. Hashem’s brother, Hojjat, embarks on a journey into the labyrinths of the underworld in Tehran to find out who is responsible for this dirty game.

The lineup also features Niki Karimi’s “Atabai”, Reza Dormishian’s “No Choice”, Majid Barzagar’s “The Rain Falls Where It Will” and Morteza Farshbaf’s “Tooman”.

The 2022 Festival Cinemas d’Iran will also screen a number of short and documentary films.

Photo: A poster for the 2022 Festival Cinemas d’Iran. 

MMS/YAW