TEHRAN – Four theaters across the Lebanese capital of Beirut have begun screening the acclaimed Iranian film “The Stranger”.

Director Mohammad-Hossein Latifi and crew members are in Lebanon to promote the war drama.  

It portrays IRGC commander Mohammad Borujerdi’s struggles against separatists in western Iran to maintain territorial integrity in the region in the early 1980s.

The theaters will be screening the film for a month and it will later be showcased at open-air theaters across the country.

“The Stranger” had its Iranian premiere in February during the 41st Fajr International Film Festival, which honored Pardis Purabedini as best actress for her role in the film.

It scored a big win by garnering five prizes at the National Will Manifestation Awards, a supplement to the Fajr Film Festival that features awards presented by public organizations and institutes to those films that are in agreement with their goals and interests.

Director Latifi, writer and producer Hamed Anqa and actor Babak Hamidian, who stars as Borujerdi in the film, won awards from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, Bank Mellat, the Culture Ministry’s Quran Department, the Office of the Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, and the Public Culture Council.

Earlier in May, the Iranian Academy of Arts paid tribute to Latifi by presenting him with its IAA Plaque of Glory for the film.

The film has been directed based on “Mohammad, the Christ of Kordestan” authored about the film’s leading character by Nosratollah Mahmudzadeh, who collaborated as an advisor to the film.

According to the writer, Borujerdi was one of the forerunners of the IRGC, who was nominated to take the helm at the army, however, he preferred to continue his assignment on the western front.

Born in 1954, Mohammad Borujerdi received military training in Syria and Lebanon in the 1970s.

He was a member of the guard escorting Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, on his return to Iran on February 1, 1979, after living in exile abroad for years.

After the 1979 victory of the Islamic Revolution, he was commissioned to fight Kurdish separatists in western Iran in the early 1980s. He succeeded in maintaining the territorial integrity of the region. Ultimately, he was killed by a landmine on the road to Naqadeh from Mahabad on May 22, 1983.

Photo: Babak Hamidian stars as Mohammad Borujerdi in “The Stranger”.

MMS/YAW