TEHRAN – Iranian actor Payman Maadi, the star of the Oscar-winning drama “A Separation”, has been selected as a member for a jury of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

He received the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival for his role in “A Separation” in 2011.

Maadi co-starred with Kristen Stewart in U.S. director Peter Sattler’s debut “Camp X-Ray” in 2014 and collaborated in Japanese director Kazuaki Kiriya’s action-adventure “Last Knights” in 2015.

Along with television producer Chelsea Barnard and actress Marielle Heller, Maadi will select the winners in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, the Sundance Institute said after announcing juries for other categories of the festival, which will take place in Park City, Utah, from January 20 to 30.

Garrett Bradley, Joan Churchill and Peter Nicks have been selected for the U.S. Documentary Competition, while Andrew Haigh, Mohamed Hefzy and La Frances Hui will judge the films in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition.

The winners in the World Cinema Documentary Competition will be selected by Emilie Bujès, Patrick Gaspard and Dawn Porter.

Joey Soloway has been picked for the NEXT competition section, while Penelope Bartlett, Kevin Jerome Everson and Blackhorse Lowe are members of the jury for the Short Film Program Competition.

The jury for Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize is composed of Heather Berlin, Mandë Holford, Tenoch Huerta, Lydia Dean Pilcher and Shawn Snyder. They deliberated in advance of the Festival and awarded the Prize to After Yang, directed by Kogonada.  

The Iranian short films “The Fourth Wall” by Mahbubeh Kalai and “Orthodontics” directed by Mohammadreza Mayqani will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival.

The acclaimed animation “The Fourth Wall” shows a stuttering boy who transforms an Iranian kitchen into a fantastic cosmos. The father’s body becomes a refrigerator, the mother’s belly a washing machine whose spin cycle gives birth to a screaming baby. Even birds on tiles and detergents have a surprising life of their own.

The short drama “Orthodontics” tells the story of Amitis, a teenage girl who always has headgear as part of orthodontic treatment, and suddenly does something strange to her friend Sarah.

Photo: Iranian actor Payman Maadi in an undated photo.

MMS/YAW