TEHRAN – Acclaimed Iranian-Canadian drama “Botox” has been selected to compete in the official section of the Salento International Film Festival in Italy.

Directed by Kaveh Mazaheri, the movie is about sisters Akram and Azar. Both lie about their brother’s disappearance, telling everyone he fled to Germany. Day after day, the lie becomes bigger and more unmanageable, leading everyone to a dark and mysterious destiny.

“Botox” has been screened at several international film festivals and won awards in some of them.

In November 2020, the film was named the best feature at the 38th Torino Film Festival in Italy. The film co-written by Mazaheri and Sepinud Najian also won the award for best screenplay at the event.

The movie also brought Mazaheri the first-film director award at the 38th Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran in June.

The 18th Salento International Film Festival will open on September 8 with screening “EST – Dictatorship Last Minute” by Italian director Antonio Pisu.

The film is based on a true story that is set in 1989, a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin wall. 

Pago, Rice and Bibi, three twenty-four-year-olds leave quiet Cesena in search of adventure: ten days of vacation in Eastern Europe, to those places where the Soviet regime is still present. Once in Budapest, they meet Emil, a Romanian fleeing his country due to the dictatorship. The man, worried about his family still in Romania, asks the three Italians for help. The task is simple: carry a suitcase to his wife and daughter.

“I Am You”, a film by Sonia Nassery Cole from Afghanistan, will be screened on the closing day of the festival on September 12.

Afghanistan is a war-torn country that has endured for twenty years under a tyrannical dictatorship exercised by ISIS. Unlivable and desolate, it is a land marred by conflicts. For the young protagonist Massoud, born and raised in Afghanistan, after having witnessed the slaughter of his father, all that remains is to flee: together with other refugees, including a pregnant woman, he must cross the borders of various countries to reach Europe. It is a difficult and tortuous journey, made of clandestine encounters, full of terrible vicissitudes that touch death and despair.

Photo: A scene from “Botox” by Kaveh Mazaheri.

MMS/YAW