Iranian Women Directors At Sundance Who Can’t Go Home – “I Guess That’s The Price Of Telling The Truth, And Telling Our Truth”

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has been released from Evin prison in Tehran.

Sony Pictures Classics has taken North American on Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version which won the Audience Award (U.S. Dramatic Competition) and The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award (U.S. Dramatic Competition) at this year’s Sundance. Keshavarz is the first filmmaker to have two films win the Sundance Audience Award in the Dramatic Competition category.

Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, French filmmaker Alice Diop and Romanian director Cristian Mungiu have demanded that Iran’s Fajr International Film Festival remove their films from the line-up of its current edition, running from February 1 to 11.

Dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has gone on hunger strike to protest his ongoing detention at Iran’s notoriously harsh Evin prison, even though his sentence has been declared void by the country’s Supreme Court.

Holy Spider star Zar Amir Ebrahimi led a demonstration in support of the people of Iran and the artists who have been detained by the country’s political regime at the Göteborg Film Festival Tuesday evening.

The Sundance Film Festival returned to Park City after a two-year virtual hiatus and that means the in-person awards ceremony returned as well. Well, sorta.

Jafar Panahi’s wife Tahereh Saeedi issued a fresh appeal for her imprisoned husband to be released as his period of captivity entered 200 days, in an Instagram post on Thursday.

A few weeks after Zar Amir-Ebrahimi won the Best Actress Award in Cannes for her performance as journalist Arezoo Rahimi in crime thriller Holy Spider, the Iranian-French actor flew to Melbourne, Australia, to take part in what was set to be another urgent story from an Iranian filmmaker: Noora Niasari’s debut feature Shayda. 

Apple has confirmed Deadline’s scoop on winning an all-night bidding battle for the John Carney-directed Flora and Son, as Apple’s Heads of Worldwide Video Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht and their head of features Matt Dentler burned the midnight oil to make the label’s biggest Sundance Film Festival deal since they acquired CODA in 2021. That film went on to establish Apple as the first streamer to win the Best Picture Oscar, with the film also winning Best Adapted Screenplay for director Sian Heder and Best Supporting Actor for Troy Kotsur.

The Persian Version, directed and written by Maryam Keshvarz stars Layla Mohammadi, and Niousha Noor as a mother and daughter at odds with one another.

The thorny, complicated history between the United States and Iran is infinitely more complex for those of the Persian diaspora living in America. It’s this nuanced tension trickling down to identity — between being too much this and not enough that in either homeland — that writer-director-producer Maryam Keshavarz (“Circumstance”) explores in her third film, “The Persian Version,” a decades and generation-spanning dramedy.

Berlinale artistic director Carlo Chatrian and executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeck reveal the festival’s main Competition and Encounters selections at a press conference on Monday, January 23, as they gear up for their first fully in-person edition since 2020 from February 16 to 26.

The Berlinale staunchly condemns Russia’s ongoing war of aggression, which violates international law, and expresses its solidarity with the people in Ukraine and all those who are campaigning against this war. The festival also stands with the courageous protesters in Iran as they defend themselves against a violent, undemocratic regime.In expressing this solidarity, the festival will not exclude filmmakers, artists, industry representatives or journalists because of their Russian or Iranian nationality.

More than 100 key figures from the UK film and TV industry have signed a letter urging the UK government to take “immediate action” against Iranian authorities for “gross violations of human rights and women’s rights” in their response to the wave of public protests that erupted last year.

Refresh for latest…: James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water continues to outdo itself having crossed $1.8B globally and reaching nearly $1.9B at the worldwide box office through this weekend.

Barney, Norma and magical-talking-dog Pugsley are closing out their summer adventures at Netflix after the streamer canceled the animated series Dead End: Paranormal Park.

Threave Rovers returned to action with a “home” win over Easterhouse on Saturday.