TEHRAN – Iranian movies “The Wasteland” and “Titi” have won awards at the Nouvelles Images Persanes Festival in Vitré, France.

Directed by Ahmad Bahrami, “The Wasteland” received the Artistic and Cultural Education Award and an International Jury Prize.

The film follows a remote brick manufacturing factory producing bricks using an ancient method. Many families with different ethnicities work in the factory and the boss seems to hold the key to solving their problems. Forty-year-old Lotfollah, who was born on-site, is the factory supervisor and acts as go-between for the workers and the boss. The boss has Lotfollah gather all the workers in front of his office. He wants to talk to them about the shutdown of the factory. All that matters now to Lotfollah is to keep Sarvar unharmed, the woman he has been in love with for a long time.

Upon its world premiere at the Venice festival, “The Wasteland” won three awards, including best film in the Horizons section and the critics’ FIPRESCI Prize.

Director Ida Panahandeh’s latest drama “Titi” won the audience award of the Nouvelles Images Persanes Festival at the closing ceremony on Monday.

Working in a hospital, Titi encounters Ebrahim, a nuclear physicist suffering from a terminal illness. Taking a liking to Titi, he explains his work to her, and she believes that it is essential to the future of the planet. When he slips into a coma, his wife demands his papers are discarded, but Titi takes them home, where her husband lines his rabbit cages with them. Eight-month pregnant as a surrogate for a childless couple, Titi wanders into the sea, where her mystical powers are able to bring the professor back to life. As he searches for the papers she took, he enters the world of Titi, and nothing will ever be the same.

“The Island Within” by Ru Hasanov from Azerbaijan also won an International Jury Prize.

In this film, Vitaly enjoys the dusk of his life on an island with thousands of feral horses until his solitude is interrupted by Seymour, an emotionally and physically abused international chess grandmaster.

Photo: Ali Baqeri acts in a scene from “The Wasteland”.

MMS/YAW