TEHRAN – “Starless Dreams” and “The People of the Wind” from Iranian documentary filmmakers are competing in the 35th Jean Rouch International Film Festival, which is underway in Paris.

Directed by Mehrdad Oskui, “Starless Dreams” follows a group of teenage girls taken into care at a girls’ juvenile detention facility on the outskirts of Tehran for a variety of reasons ranging from drug dealing and trafficking to pick-pocketing and manslaughter.

The film has been honored in several Iranian and international festivals.

“The people of the Wind” by Abtin Sarabi is about a ritual on the coast of the Persian Gulf in southern Iran called Zaar, which is a kind of musical exorcism.

The festival, which focuses on anthropological and ethnographical documentaries, will run until November 11.

ABU/YAW