Tehran session to review image of Sistan-Baluchestan in Iranian cinema

TEHRAN –(Iranart)- The image of Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan Province in Iranian cinema will be discussed during a session opening Thursday at the Vartan Hovanesian House in Tehran.

The four-day session is the first meeting of a series, which aims to study areas for development of the province, the house has announced in a press release published on Sunday.

A number of experts from the province as well several Iranian filmmakers who have experience in making films in the region are expected to attend the program. 

“The great cultural and economic potentials of the Sistan-Baluchestan region have been ruined by unrealistic portrayals and as a result the normal chances of economic progress have been eliminated,” the organizers said in a statement.

“For years now, a dusty, odd and dilapidated image of the region has been formed in the minds of people and the media. Sometimes this land of hardworking people has been portrayed as a shelter of traffickers, sometimes as the symbol of poverty, and sometimes violence,” the statement added.

Several filmmakers have shot their films in the region over the past years. The most recent one is director Narges Abyar’s 2019 drama “When the Moon Was Full”.

The film is about Abdul-Hamid Rigi, the younger brother of Abdul-Malik Rigi, the founder and leader of the Jundallah terrorist group in southeastern Iran, who marries Faezeh Mansuri, a woman from Tehran. He forces Faezeh to leave her homeland along with her brother to live in Pakistan where they find themselves involved in Jundallah terrorist activities.

“Flaming” by Hamid Nematollah was also shot in the province. It tells the story of a jealous man named Farid. He is actually a real loser, but believes himself to be a hero, the champion of champions.

Farid is a drug addict, has no job, his wife has left him and his only son has no interest in seeing him; he lives with his mom and has also disrupted her life as well.

source: Tehran Times