TEHRAN – Iranian-Afghan actress Fereshteh Hosseini received an award at the 30th Rabat International Writers Film Festival, held in Morocco from November 8th to 15th.
According to a report from ISNA, she won the Best Actress award for her role in Vuk Rusmović’s “The Abode of the Gods.”
This 2024 Serbian-Italian-Croatian film follows a young Afghan woman (Hosseini) who arrives in Belgrade at the height of a wave of immigration and learns that her brother drowned in a river three weeks earlier. And so begins her struggle to bury him with his full name.
Hosseini gives a ferocious lead performance in the film, which is partially fictionalized about her own immigrant journey. The wails, sobs, and howls she is summoned to within her slight frame feel primal. They encounter a tragedy that crosses borders.
Throughout The Abode of the Gods, the director subjects his actors, especially Hosseini, to a disconcerting, almost documentary-like reality.
The film had its world premiere at the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina in August, and has won several awards so far.
Earlier this month, the film won three awards at the 8th Euro-Balkan Film Festival, held in Rome from October 30th to November 6th. Director Hosseini won the CineEurope Award and received two awards, including Best Actress and a special award for Best Actor/Actress by the Youth Jury.
Iranian film producer Elaheh Novakt served as a juror at this year’s Rabat International Writers’ Film Festival.
Novakt, who has served on the jury of more than 10 international film festivals, evaluated the films in the festival’s main competition section along with six other distinguished jurors, including Jean-Claude Barney (France), Marieke de Koning (Netherlands), Maimouna Ndiaye (France/Burkina Faso) and Karim Deberg (Morocco).
Dedicated to celebrating auteur films, films that embody true artistic vision and intellectual depth, this year’s edition focused on bold, innovative and unconventional works that challenge stereotypes and push the boundaries of cinematic expression.
The Rabat International Writers Film Festival is known for fostering cultural dialogue and bringing together filmmaking talent from around the world, and occupies a strategic position on the world film map.
Now in its 8th year, the festival featured over 150 films and visionary works by renowned filmmakers from around the world.
The Rabat International Writers’ Film Festival is dedicated to brave films, including “writers’ films”, true films of all forms of art and thought, demanding, intelligent and even radical films that subvert clichés. It’s a film with an urgency and a personal text dedicated to humanity in all its forms.
The purpose of the festival is to meet and get to know films, authors and the public. It is an alternative practice to counter the industrial machine that has globalized tastes and erased the right to be different.
SS/SAB