TEHRAN – Iranian filmmaker Hassan Khademi’s documentary “Death and the Judge” about Iran’s most famous criminal judge Nurollah Azizmohammadi went on screen during a session at the Iranian Artists Forum (IAF) in Tehran on Tuesday. 

The program was attended by Khademi, Azizmohammadi and a number of cultural officials and cineastes. 

Produced in 2017, the film follows the personal and professional life of Azizmohammadi, who served as a criminal judge for 45 years and passed about 4500 death sentences.  

“Death and the Judge” tries to show the role of death in the judge’s life as he either takes life away from criminals or death comes to his loved ones like his father.

Azizmohammadi’s 88-year-old father was killed by a young man in his home during a burglary in 2010, but instead of claiming for retaliation, Azizmohammadi preferred to forgive the killer. 

“Although I have to sentence killers to death based on the law in some of my cases, I always ask victim’s next of kin to forgive them. I did the same for my father’s case,” Azizmohammadi once said in an interview.

“Death and the Judge” received the Award of the Association of Iranian Filmmaking Institutes and Companies (AIFIC) at the 11th edition of the Cinema Verite, Iran’s major documentary film festival, in 2017.

“The film doesn’t intend to exonerate, defend or support Azizmohammadi. I didn’t want to depict a heroic face for him,” Khademi told the Persian service of Honaronline on Monday. 

“I just wanted to show that a person who orders the execution of thousands of criminals can be an ordinary person who does his job accurately and it puts a heavy burden on him,” he added.  

“Despite what I expected, Azizmohammadi was really cooperative with me and he was easy to work with, as it took me over four years to make the documentary,” he concluded.

Photo: A poster for Hassan Khademi’s documentary “Death and the Judge”.

ABU/MMS/YAW