TEHRAN -- “Jan-i-Gal” is scheduled to premiere today in Sulaymaniah, Iraqi Kurdistan.

A joint production of Iran and Iraq, the film is based on a novel of the same name by the Iraqi Kurdish author Ibrahim Ahmed, who has written many poems and novels. Critics describe “Jan-i-Gal” (The Agony of a People) as the first accurate novel depicting the cultural and political situation of Iraq during the 1940s and 1950s. Directed by Iranian Kurdish filmmaker Jamil Rostami, “Jan-i-Gal” features a man called Jwamer, who goes to get a midwife for his wife Kaleh, who is in labor. By ill luck, he runs into the middle of a demonstration in the town of Sulaymaniah, is seriously wounded and arrested by mistake as the ringleader. After a rigged trial, Jwamer is sentenced to ten years in prison. He serves his sentence and, as soon as he is set free, goes in search of his wife and child. “Jan-i-Gal” is also slated to be screened on July 27 in Erbil, another city in Iraqi Kurdistan. Rostami’s “Requiem of Snow”, which was produced jointly by Iran and Iraq, represented Iraqi cinema in the category of Best Foreign Language Film at the 78th Annual Academy Awards in 2006. Rostami, in collaboration with an Italian producer, plans to make “Kirkuk’s Flower”, another Kurdish-themed film, in the near future