TEHRAN – The Munich Cinema Iran Festival has announced its 2022 program will begin by screening “Killing the Eunuch Khan” on July 13.

Directed by Abed Abest, the film is about a serial killer that uses his victims to kill more victims.

In this film set during the war between Iran and Iraq, a father lives with his two daughters in a big, strangely haunted house in a nearly deserted city close to the border. 

One day, he leaves the girls at home alone in order to participate in a funeral ceremony. That same day, the city is struck by a bombing raid, and a bomb falls in his garden. From that point on, some sort of ghostly vibration unhinges his own reality, and the world of the dead seems to mingle with the world of the living.

The film won the Breakouts Feature Grand Jury Prize at the Slamdance Film Festival in the United States.

On the second day, the festival will go on with a review of Nasser Taqvai’s 1969 short documentary “Wind of Jinn”.

This documentary shows the Zaar tradition in Bandar Lengeh in southern Iran. It is a kind of local dancing and singing to exorcise the jinn from people who are believed to be possessed by evil.

The session will be followed by a discussion of Farhad Varahram’s 2013 documentary “Blacks of Southern Iran”. 

The film, which is also known as “Blacks of the South”, is about the history and origin of Blacks in the southern region of our country, where they entered Iran and how they adjusted to the culture and customs there over the years.

The festival will also screen “Woodgirls - A Duet for a Dream”.

Director Azadeh Bizargiti centers on the unique story of Leila Avakh and Sediqeh Momennia, as they follow their dream of opening a carpentry workshop run by women for women.

With much love and passion, Leila and Sediqeh have chosen a profession that is considered extremely masculine in the traditional societies of West Asia. They are some of Iran’s first female carpenters. Licenses and formal training in such trades are unavailable for women.

The program also features Germany-based Iranian filmmakers Narges Kalhor’s documentary “In the Name of Scheherazade” and Daniel Asadi Faezi’s “Slowly Forgetting Your Faces”.

The festival will come to an end by screening “Absence”, a co-production of Iran, Czech and Slovakia.

Directed by Ali Mosaffa, the film is about an Iranian man who visits Prague to investigate his father’s youth in the city. He finds himself in the shoes of a third man who is almost dead and happens to be of Iranian origin. The film shows how the heavy security atmosphere coming after the 1953 military coup in Iran, which forced some to flee the country to seek asylum in Eastern Europe.

Photo: A scene from “Killing the Eunuch Khan”, which will open the Munich Cinema Iran Festival on July 13.

MMS/YAW