TEHRAN – Iran won six awards at the 31st Minsk International Film Festival “Ristapad” held in Belarus from October 31 to November 7.
Director Mohammadreza Kheradmandan’s “The Catcher in the Rye” (also known as “The Keeper of the Fields”), Hadi Zarei and Mehdi Zarei’s “Gamal Taj,” Hossein Alakhli’s “Under the Oak,” Reza Keshavars Haddad’s “Banana Garden” and Mohsen Enayati’s “Dreamland” won awards at the event, IRNA reported.
In the Major Feature Film Competition category, the Yuri Malkhin Award for Best Feature Film Cinematography went to Morteza Ghafouri for “The Catcher in the Rye.” The film also received a certificate in the same category for “deep immersion into the world of disaster and discovery of modern society”.
In the main non-fiction film competition category, Gamal-Taj was awarded a certificate of merit “for a historical and philosophical understanding of the fate of countries and peoples in the aesthetics of documentary film”.
In the Short Film Competition category, “Under the Shady Oak” was awarded a certificate for “Embodiing the theme of traditional family values”.
In the film competition “Youth Films” category, “Banana Garden” won the Best Film Award at the Viktor Turov Youth Film Competition.
The Iranian animated film “Dreamland” won the Special Jury Award. He also won the “Artistic Embodiment of Universal Human Values” award.
One of the judges in the main non-fiction film competition category was Tahereh Sorgi from Iran.
Born in Tehran, she is a cultural scholar, art critic, film scholar, film historian, film director, educator, and translator.
A graduate student at the Faculty of Culture of the State University of Management in Moscow, she has written more than ten articles on Russian cinema in Russian and Farsi.
For 31 years, every November in Minsk has been measured by a movie meter. From art house releases to intellectual film classics, from global box office tops to retrospectives of Belarusian filmmakers.
The 30th anniversary of the Minsk International Film Festival “Listapad” stayed true to the slogan “Cinema with quality guarantee”. The film festival once again fulfilled its core mission: to unite cultures, people, and hearts through the art of the big screen.
Last year, the festival broke all records and proved that Listapad knows no limits. In 2023, the festival received 2,087 applications from 107 countries, and in 2024, the festival reached an impressive number of 3,405 applications from 124 countries.
133 films from this diverse field were selected for the program and the event’s coverage expanded to include cultural days from countries such as India, Iran, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Russia.
Alongside the competition screening, which was attended by more than 30,000 spectators, numerous masterclasses and creative meetings were held, attracting more than 1,500 guests.
This year’s slogan is “History that changes perspectives.” The upcoming edition’s lineup includes 157 movies from 41 countries.
SS/SAB