TEHRAN-The 6th Beijing International Children's Film Festival kicked off in China on July 22 with four movies from Iran in the line-up of different sections.

The feature animation “A Passenger from Ganora” directed by Seyed Ahmad Alamdar, short animation “Being Ten” by Fatemeh Jafari, feature film “World, Northern Hemisphere” by Hossein Tehrani, and short film “The Kites” by Seyyed Payam Hosseini are the Iranian participants in this year’s edition of the festival, IRNA reported.

Competing in the International Feature Competition, “A Passenger from Ganora” is a 94-minute animation made in 2024.

A family, science fiction, and adventure animation, it is about an alien who comes to the earth to search for the ruler of the planet Ganora, who is lost on earth. A disabled boy and his friends help the alien to restore peace to the land of Ganora.

In this section, Alamdar’s animation vies for the Golden Flower Award along with 13 other films from Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the International Short Competition, “Being Ten” is competing with 16 movies from Brazil, Canada, Hungary, Cyprus, Belgium, India, China, South Korea, France, Russia, the UK, and the U.S.

A production by the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA), “Being Ten” is about a father and his ten-year-old son who live in a lonely cottage in the middle of a dense wood. The father, a hunter, spares one of his prizes and brings it home as a present for his son. What, at first, was just a plaything forever will change the young boy's life.

The other two Iranian films are present in the BRICS Countries competition section.

A 2020 production, “World, Northern Hemisphere” is an 84-minute film about Ahmad Showhani, a 12-year-old boy, who works on a leased farm together with his mother and two sisters. One day, a piece of human skull bone is found in the farm.

The cast includes Reza Shohani, Mehran Atashzay, Saideh Albaji, Abolfazl Aghakhani, Mohammad Esmaeili, Khaton Albaji, and Zahra Baji.

In “The Kites,” a girl is playing on the green slopes of a valley in Kurdistan, on the border between Iran and Iraq, when her kite is suddenly swept across the river by the wind. Three boys on the other side see her calling for help, but cannot make out what she is saying as she is just too far away. Separated by the river, the children try to communicate with each other - yet between them lie the explosive remnants of past wars.

Karo Ghavami, Ramyar Ghavami, Karo Hassani, Amir Kadkhodai, Osman Pira, Kimiya Khalediyan, and Amir Salehian are in the cast.

The two Iranian short ant feature films are competing with six movies from India, Brazil, China, and Russia in the section.

The Beijing International Children's Film Festival was established in 2018. Now it has become the largest children's film festival in China.

A non-profit film festival supported by the Red Cross Foundation of China, it is open to films from all over the world.

More than 200 films are screened every year, with more than 5 million young people and children watching online.

In cooperation with the Red Cross Society and other foundations, the festival donates film watching activities and cultural facilities for disabled children and left-behind children.

The 6th Beijing International Children's Film Festival will conclude on July 28.

SS/SAB