News in Brief
Iranian film wins best picture in WMAFF
ISNA – The ‘Lady of the City,’ directed by Maryam Bahrololoomi, won the best fiction film award from the 7th edition of the Women Media Arts and Film Festival (WMAFF) in Australia.
Iranian filmmaker Narges Abyar was also one of the three jury members of the film festival, along with Australian actress and writer Kate Fitzpatrick and the New Zealand-born, Australia-based filmmaker Margot Nash.
Abyar is the director of several acclaimed movies including ‘Track 143’, ‘Breath,’ and ‘When the Moon Was Full’.
Two other Iranian films, namely ‘Kal Fatemeh’ by Mehdi Zamanpour-Kiasari and ‘The Sun of that Moon’ by Setareh Eskandari, also took part in different sections of the festival but were left empty-handed.
Lady of the City has participated in several prestigious foreign festivals and won the best feature film in the women filmmakers section of the 20th Dhaka International Film Festival, the best narrative feature film at the 13th Sydney World Film Festival, and the best actress award at the 8th North Hollywood International Film Festival in the US.
Bahrololoumi and her movies have repeatedly been praised at the Fajr Film Festiv
Global tourism on track for full recovery
UNWTO – International tourism is well on its way to returning to pre-pandemic levels, with twice as many people traveling during the first quarter of 2023 than in the same period of 2022.
The new data from the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) shows that overall, international arrivals reached 80% of pre-pandemic levels during the period, as an estimated 235 million tourists traveled internationally.