TEHRAN – The Lebanese actor Joseph Salameh who is starring as Abu Omar al-Shishani in Iranian director Ebrahim Hatamikia’s Daesh drama “Damascus Time” is in Tehran to attend several special screenings of the movie.

Hadi Hejazifar, another leading actor from the movie, and Hatamikia will also accompany Salameh during the screenings, which have been arranged at Kurosh Cineplex for tomorrow. 

He was introduced to Iranians in a trailer of the movie, in which he, as the Georgian Chechen commander of Daesh, utters the sentence, “chituri Irani” (“how are the Iranians”) in Persian with an Arabic accent.

“Damascus Time” is about an Iranian pilot and his son as copilot who are seized by the Daesh forces in Syria when are in the country to deliver a cargo of humanitarian relief supplies to people in a war-torn region.

In an interview published by the Persian service of FNA earlier in April, Salameh, 33, said that he did extensive research on Al-Shishani to collect information to help him make the character credible.    

Hejazifar and Babak Hamidian are the sole Iranian actors of the cast, which is composed of a number of Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi actors.  

The movie, which was shot on location in Iran and Syria, was made at the Owj Arts and Media Organization, a Tehran-based institution producing revolutionary works in art and cinema.

Photo: Lebanese actor Joseph Salameh plays the role of the Daesh commander Abu Omar al-Shishani in Iranian director Ebrahim Hatamikia’s drama “Damascus Time”.

MMS/YAW