TEHRAN – Five movies by Iranian filmmakers, including Saghar Farhadi’s acclaimed drama “A Hero”, will be screened at the 26th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) as the organizers announced the official lineup last week.

“A Hero” will be competing in Icons, a BIFF showcase of the latest films by contemporary iconic filmmakers from around the world.

The film, which won the Grand Prix (ex aequo) at Cannes 2021, is about Rahim who is taken into custody as he is unable to pay his debts. After being granted a two-day parole, he attempts to get his lender to write off part of the debt and withdraw the charges. When Rahim finds a handbag full of gold pieces and returns it to the owner instead of helping himself, he is suddenly celebrated in the media as an upstanding citizen.

“The Absent Director” by Arvand Dashtaray and “Asteroid” by Mehdi Hosseinivand Aalipur will compete in New Currents, a section dedicated to up-and-coming Asian filmmakers’ first or second features that bestows two films with a New Currents Award.

“The Absent Director”, in one continuous take, follows the various members of a young Iranian theater company during their secret rehearsals of Macbeth at their director’s home in Tehran, while he works with them remotely from Paris via video call. Their dream is to submit the play to the Edinburgh Theater Festival on time, but things get complicated when their personal conflicts escalate, and their hidden agendas come into light. The heated tensions reach their climax when a mysterious tragedy threatens to bring their work to a complete halt.

“Asteroid” is about Ebrahim, a 12-year-old boy who lives with his mother and five siblings of all ages in a two-room shack in the heart of the desert, far away from the village.

Aside from feeding the children and obtaining a birth certificate for them, the main preoccupation of Ebrahim and his mother is to build a house in the village so they don’t have to walk all the way back and forth all the time.

“Ballad of a White Cow” by Behtash Sanaeiha and Maryam Moqaddam has been selected to be screened in A Window on Asian Cinema, a section for films of various styles and visions from Asian cinema.

It tells the story of Mina, a young woman who lives alone with her deaf child as her husband was executed for a murder charge a year ago. She tries to get her life together, take good care of her child and make both ends meet. However, her life gets more sorrowful when she finds out that her husband was innocent.

“Cloudy Man” by Shahin Jalali will be screened in the Asian Short Film Competition of the Korean festival, which will open on October 6 with a screening of “Heaven: To the Land of Happiness” by Korean filmmaker Im Sang-soo.

Reza Mirkarimi, the director of the acclaimed Iranian dramas “Castle of Dreams” and “A Cube of Sugar”, is the president of the Kim Jiseok Award Jury at the Busan festival this year.

“Anita” by Longman Leung from Hong Kong will be the closing film of the event on October 15. 

Photo: “Asteroid” by Mehdi Hosseinivand Aalipur.

MMS/YAW