TEHRAN-More than 2,900 documentaries have applied for the 18th edition of the Iran International Documentary Film Festival Cinéma Vérité, due to be held next month.

The submissions include 2,314 foreign documentaries from 123 countries and 628 local documentaries including short, semi-feature, and feature-length films, Honaronline reported.

The submitted documentaries hail from a diverse range of countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Brazil, Spain, Egypt, Turkey, Italy, Russia, Argentina, the U.S., China, France, Germany, Mexico, Indonesia, Portugal, and Greece.

The Documentary & Experimental Film Center (DEFC) organizes the 18th Cinema Vérité. The festival tries to express the relationship between reality and truth through documentary films.

This year’s edition of the festival will have several sections including the national competition, the international competition, the Martyr Avini Award, “Gaza, Palestine, Resistance,” commemoration ceremonies, and other programs on the sideline of the event.

In the last year’s edition of the festival, “The Golden Thread” directed by Indian filmmaker Nishtha Jain won the main award of the feature-length documentary category of the international competition section, while in the semi-feature documentary category, the Lebanese documentary “Kalashnikov Society” by Christophe Karabache won the main award.

The special jury prize of the section was awarded to “Under Construction” from Finland by Markus Toivo and the short documentary “Vibrations from Gaza” by the Palestinian-Canadian filmmaker Rehab Nazzal was announced as the winner of the short documentary category.

SS/