TEHRAN-The 11th Iranian Film Festival Australia (IFFA) will commence on November 16 in Sydney and will continue for about a month in five other cities.

The only nation-wide Australian festival dedicated to Iranian cinema, the event will showcase a total of 21 feature, short and documentary films from the latest productions in Iran, ISNA reported.

Sydney will be the first of six cities to host the festival for a week, from November 16 to 22. The festival will continue in Canberra for three days, from November 17 to 22. The next stop will be Melbourne, where movies will be screened for another week, from November 23 to 29.

Taking the films to Brisbane, the festival will run from November 30 to December 6. In the meantime, and for three days, Adelaide will also play host to the event form December 1 to 3. Perth will be the last stop in the festival, where the movies will hit the silver screen from December 7 to 13.

Among the most notable Iranian works at the festival, there are feature films by award-winning directors such as Vahid Jalilvand, Reza Mirkarimi, and Ahmad Bahrami as well as a documentary about the world-renowned filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.

The third and latest film written and directed by Vahid Jalilvand, “Beyond the Wall” is about a blind man named Ali who attempts suicide, but is interrupted by his building concierge; he then tells Ali about an escaped woman, named Leila, who is hidden in the building. Ali becomes determined to help Leila.

The film stars Navid Mohammadzadeh and Amir Aghaei, who both worked with Jalilvand in his previous film “No Date, No Signature,” which won the Orizzonti Award for Best Actor and Director at the 74th Venice Film Festival.

“Beyond The Wall” has so far received several nominations at the 79th Venice International Festival and Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

Another participant in this year’s edition of the IFFA is Iran’s submission to the forthcoming 96th Academy Awards in the best foreign-language film category “The Night Guardian” by Reza Mirkarimi.

It is about a man named Rasoul who has left the village due to drought. He is glad to find a job as a night guardian at a complex under construction. However, in the deserted construction site, something wrong is going on and Rasoul finds himself trapped in the strange circumstances around him.

The film, which will have its Australian premiere, received the best director award and special mention for the best actor at the Fajr Film Festival in 2022.

Mirkarimi, 56, has so far made 10 feature films, winning numerous national and international awards for them including the 40th International Critics Week Best Feature Award at the 2001 Cannes International Film Festival, Best Director Award and the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2001, and the Golden Peacock Award at the International Film Festival of India.

“The Wastetown” is the title of the movie written and directed by Ahmad Bahrami, which was the winner of best director award at the Tallinn Black Night Film Festival in 2022.

Set against the backdrop of a car breakers yard, the film shows Bemani who has been temporarily released from jail after 10 years, attempting to find out the whereabouts of the son she was forced to give up in prison.

With his second film “The Wasteland,” Bahrami, 50, won many awards in international film festivals including Orizzonti Best Film Award at the 77th Venice Int’l Film Festival in 2020. “The WasteTown” is the third feature film he has written and directed.

Baran Kosari, Ali Bagheri, Babak Karimi, and Behzad Dorani are in the cast among others.

The documentary shown at this year’s IFFA is “Kiarostami at Work,” which is about one of the most influential directors in the world, the late Abbas Kiarostami.

Kiarostami’s longtime friend and collaborator Seifollah Samadian has directed, edited, and produced this 76-minute documentary.

Depicting Kiarostami’s boundless passion for work and creativity, the film features images captured by Samadian during their thirty years of friendship and travels together, as well as behind-the-scenes footage of “Shirin” and “Certified Copy” by the late Hamideh Razavi, and “Taste of Cherry” by Bahman Kiarostami. Juliette Binoche, Martin Scorsese, and some others have also shared insights into Kiarostami’s creative works in the movie.

Kiarostami’s first movie “Where Is the Friend’s Home?” (1987) was awarded the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. “Close-Up” (1990), one of his films, was ranked 42nd in British Film Institute’s The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time.

He was the only Iranian filmmaker who won the Palme D’Or, the top prize at Cannes, with his 1997 film ‘Taste of Cherry’, a film to appreciate life in a delicate way based on Iranian values.

Samadian, 69, has worked in close collaboration with Kiarostami as the cameraman of “A.B.C Africa,” “Five” and “Roads of Kiarostami”.

His documentary “76 Minutes & 15 Seconds with Abbas Kisrostami” (2016) has been selected and screened at the Venice Film Festival and at over hundred festivals and cultural centers.

The Iranian Film Festival Australia seeks to showcase a diverse range of the best and most interesting of current Iranian cinema, one of the world’s most exhilarating national cinemas, and through cinema to introduce Iranian culture to other Australians, providing a better cultural understanding.

Photo: Scenes from Vahid Jalilvand’s “Beyond the Wall” (L) and Seifollah Samadian’s “Kiarostami at Work”

SS/SAB