Karlovy Vary Film Festival puts Iranian cinema in spotlight
The 57th edition of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, which runs June 30-July 8, planned a retrospective program focused on Iranian cinema with a selection of films made in the past four years.
Commenting on the Iranian cinema program, the festival said in a statement: “Collectively these works offer an insightful testimony of the burning creativity of Iran’s artists. Nine mostly young filmmakers who palpably bear a spiritual connection to the previous generations of their country’s greats.” Variety wrote.
“Melancholic dramas, comedies, war movies, sci-fis…films about love, and films within films. Together, these nine unique and intensely personal testimonies form a multi-dimensional mosaic that reflect the collective spirit and openness of Iran’s young cinema of today.”
The nine Iranian films including ‘The Locust’ (Faeze Azizkhani, 2022), ‘Zapata’ (Danesh Eqbashavi, 2023), ‘The Skin’ (Bahram Ark, Bahran Ark, 2023), ‘A Trip to the Moon’ (Mohammadreza Shayan-Nejad, 2021).
‘The Locust’ is a film within a film: a comic drama and a docu-fiction. The second directorial effort from Kiarostami’s protégé Faeze Azizkhani is an ingenious hybrid of a movie, anchored by the director’s authentic female perspective.
‘Zapata,’ Danesh Eqbashavi’s rousing genre blend of comedy, detective fiction, and mockumentary, was filmed with two iPhones, a small hand-held camera, a GoPro action camera, and the appreciable influence of Roger Corman.
‘The Skin,’ the debut from the Ark brothers, hotly anticipated since 2017 when they won a Cinéfondation prize at Cannes for their short piece ‘AniMal,’ is an innovative fantasy horror flick blending genre elements with local folk legends.
Produced by the filmmaking collective Kamja, ‘A Trip to the Moon’ by Mohammadreza Shajan-Nejad follows the zany exploits of a man venturing to recover the sounds left to him by his partner in a bottle before leaving on a trip to the Moon.
The retrospective’s curator Lorenzo Esposito said: “This cinema should not be read with the regular tools we use to decode most films. This cinema compels us to reinvent our tools, to reinvent how we see and interpret film, in order to engage with the intentions of these filmmakers.”