Iran children’s film festival opens under shadow of war
Iran’s 38th International Film Festival for Children and Young Adults opens in Isfahan today under the shadow of recent wars, with Culture Minister Abbas Salehi calling for cinema to give children space for hope while also reflecting their experience of conflict.
Salehi said the festival was “the first cinematic event amid hard days of fear of war” and should help revive “a spirit of joy and hope” among Iranian children, IRNA reported on Friday. He said Iran had gone through two recent wars imposed on its people by the US and Israel, with children and adolescents bearing much of the impact.
According to Salehi, more than 400 children were killed and hundreds injured, while many spent the past year and part of the current year facing fear, loss and insecurity.
He referred to children in Tehran, Tabriz and pupils at Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab, southern Iran as symbols of unfinished dreams and lost futures. On February 28, 168 people, most of them children, lost their lives when the US pounded an elementary school in the city of Minab with Tomahawk missiles. “The festival cannot distance itself from the real world of children,” Salehi said, urging it to be both a refuge for imagination and joy and a voice for children’s rights to security, education, play and life. The festival runs from Oct. 3 to Oct. 8, with 771 works initially submitted to its national section: 46 feature films, 286 short fiction films, 176 short animations, 50 short documentaries and 107 artificial-intelligence works. Of those, 117 deal with Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab, the 12-day war in June 2025 and the February 2026 war.
The international program reviewed 173 foreign films and selected 17 from 14 countries, including eight feature or animation films and nine shorts. Eleven feature films in competition are Bamse and the Secret of the Sea by Christian Ryltenius; The Spring Bride by Fereydoun Najafi; Dante by Linda Hambäck; Amazing by Marina Andreevskop and Wanda Raymanova; Guardians of the Sun by Emad Rahmani and Mehrdad Mehrabi; Happy Birthday by Sarah Goher; Shutinga by Arash Moayrian; Migration by Mohammad Esfandiari; Mumbo Jumbo by Karsten Kiilerich and Stine Marie Buhl; My Wild Friend: Back Home by Anna Korbatova; and Not a Hero by Rima Das.
The films come from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Croatia, Slovakia, Singapore, Slovenia, Latvia, Serbia, Egypt, Russia, India and Iran. The festival is organized by the Farabi Cinema Foundation and Isfahan Municipality and is headed by secretary Hamed Jafari.
Salehi said the event should also give adolescents a greater role in its management and organization, while continuing efforts to honor children killed in Minab, Lamerd, Tehran and Tabriz.