TEHRAN-The Iranian film “The Old Bachelor” written and directed by Oktay Baraheni won an award at the 36th Galway Film Fleadh in Ireland, which was held from July 9 to 14.

At the closing ceremony of the festival, the World Cinema award was jointly awarded to “The Old Bachelor” and “To A Land Unknown” by the Danish-Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel, IRNA reported.

Baraheni’s film tells the story of two middle-aged brothers who live with their bullying father. A man prone to rages and driven by chauvinism, the father’s abusiveness found his second wife leaving him and now he picks on his eldest son. When the man rents out the flat above to a young woman, with intentions of marrying her, the woman’s attraction to the older son slowly pushes this profoundly damaged family to breaking point.

Leila Hatami, Hamed Behdad, Hassan Pourshirazi, Mohamad-Reza Davoudnejad, Reza Rouygari, Mohammad Valizadegan, and Babak Hamidian are in the cast among others.

Exploring powerful themes of patriarchy, misogyny, love, violence, and tragedy, this film has been described as a masterclass in storytelling, through its gripping, nuanced dialogue, exquisite attention to detail, and its development of tension, which simmers throughout the film until it reaches boiling point in the final, explosive act. It is a deeply visceral cinematic experience that takes the audience captive along with its characters as their world encloses around them.

The film, which had its world premiere at the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in the Netherlands in February, has won two awards so far. The 192-minute drama, won the VPRO Big Screen Award at the IFFR and Hassan Pourshirazi won the Best Performance Award at the Transilvania International Film Festival in the Romania in June.

Palestine was a key talking point at this year’s edition of Galway Film Fleadh, as the country of focus.

Fleifel’s “To A Land Unknown,” which won the World Cinema award together with Baraheni’s film is about a Palestinian refugee living on the fringes of society in Athens who gets ripped off by a smuggler and sets out to seek revenge.

Moreover, Farah Nabulsi’s “The Teacher” won the best international film prize. The Palestine-UK director’s debut feature follows a teacher in Palestine who is forced to confront his violent past.

Galway Film Fleadh is Ireland’s leading film event, a six-day international film festival taking place every July on the edge of Europe in the West Coast of Ireland. ‘Fleadh’ is the Irish word for a feast or a celebration, and like Galway itself, our festival is compact, bohemian, informal and fun. Galway Film Fleadh brings luminaries of the craft and everyday cinephiles together to share in the wonder of cinema.

Founded in 1989, as an opportunity for Irish filmmakers to exhibit their work to their peers, the central goal of the Galway Film Fleadh remains unchanged: to be a platform for the boldest new films, and to bring audiences and filmmakers from around the world together to share in the wonder of cinema. Annually, screening between 80 – 100 feature films and up to 100 short films, the Fleadh welcomes an exciting diversity of filmmaking from around the world, all generations and cultural backgrounds.

SS/SAB