TEHRAN – A documentary recalling episodes from General Qassem Soleimani’s childhood years will hit the silver screens across Iran tomorrow.

Directed by Sasan Fallahfar, “A Trace of a Man” was produced at the School of Hajji Qassem Foundation and the theater will offer free tickets for all to commemorate the third anniversary of his assassination.    

In the documentary, Fallahfar takes the audience to Qanat Malek, a village near the southern Iranian city of Kerman, where Soleimani was born, and explored his childhood experiences.

“To know Hajji Qassem, we need to go to the past, when he lived a nomadic life,” Fallahfar said in a synopsis he wrote for the documentary.

“We go to Qanat Malek, his birthplace, to visit the villagers, each shares a story about the great man,” he added.
          
“A Trace of a Man” premiered last December during the 16th Cinéma Vérité festival, Iran’s major international festival of documentary films, which took place in Tehran.

General Soleimani, the IRGC Quds Force chief, was assassinated in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad on January 3, 2020.

Born in 1957, Soleimani spent his childhood in the remote mountain area. After finishing elementary school, he left the village for Kerman, where he got a job as a construction worker.

Soleimani volunteered for service in the frontline after the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war broke out. Shortly afterward, he was selected as a commander for volunteers from Kerman, with whom he founded the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps’ 41st Sarallah Division.

The division fought in numerous operations, including Valfajr 8 and Karbala 4 and 5.

Following his assassination, many filmmakers turned their spotlight to Soleimani, who was described as a charismatic individual by many military experts.

One of the filmmakers was Mehdi Farsi, who made the biographical documentary “Qassem”.

110 Iranian theaters offered free admission to the film on the second anniversary of his assassination in 2021.

Amir Asgari directed the documentary “When the Night-Time Storm Broke” in 2022 to reveal Soleimani’s untold stories on Operation Valfajr 8.

“Liberation of Amerli” was directed by Hamed Hadian in 2020. The documentary underlines the key role the IRGC Quds Force played in breaking the 89-day siege of the northern Iraqi town of Amerli by the ISIS terrorists in 2014.

Photo: A poster for the documentary “A Trace of a Man” directed by Sasan Fallahfar.

MMS/YAW