TEHRAN – The European Film Week, which opened on Saturday simultaneously in eight Iranian cities, was canceled in Shiraz, the Persian service of IRNA reported on Tuesday.

A manager of the Golestan Cineplex in Shiraz, which was playing host to the festival, announced the cancelation on Monday evening, but gave no reason for it.

Agusti Villaronga’s 2010 drama “Black Bread” on the Spanish Civil War, and Cypriot director and producer Marios Piperides’ 2018 comedy drama “Smuggling Hendrix” were screened at the cineplex on Saturday.

The cineplex also reviewed Portuguese director Joao Botelho’s “Pilgrimage” and Bulgarian director Nadejda Koseva’s “Irina” on Sunday.

The ten-day festival is currently underway on Kish Island and in the cities of Babol, Isfahan, Kerman, Mashhad and Tabriz.

The ten-day festival opened at the Iranian Artists Forum in Tehran by screening “The Dark Valley”, a 2014 Austrian-German western drama directed by Andreas Prochaska, and “The Silent Army”, Van de Velde’s 2008 drama about the hardships of child soldiers in Africa.

Iran’s Art and Experience Cinema and the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) are co-organizing the festival, which is screening movies from Bulgaria, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Slovenia, Finland, Denmark and England.  

European diplomats and cineastes and a large number of Iranian filmmakers joined together on Saturday at the Iranian Artists Forum in Tehran to open the European Film Week.

Dutch director Jean van de Velde, Cypriot producer Marios Piperides and Swiss producer Thierry Spicher filmmakers from Iran, including Fereidun Jeirani, Rasul Sadr-Ameli and Mohammad-Mehdi Asgarpur, are scheduled to hold workshops at the event.

Photo: A poster for the European Film Week. 

MMS/YAW