TEHRAN-The Iranian feature film “Punch Drunk” directed by Adel Tabrizi won an award at the 25th Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF) in South Korea.

The festival, underway in Jeonju from May 1 to 10, announced the winners of various categories on Tuesday, and the Iranian 2023 production received the NETPAC Award, Mehr reported.

Written by Tabrizi and Arsalan Amiri, the 100-minute movie is about a literature and karate teacher who falls in love with the divorced mother of one of his students.

Set in Tehran in 1996, the story follows Mahtab who lives along with her 10-year-old child, Erfan. She is divorced from her husband, Morteza, who is in jail. Mahtab has enrolled her child in a karate class. Erfan’s only interest is cinema and could not care less about sports. Hassan Khoshnud, the tough and serious karate instructor with his dictatorial methods causes Erfan to run away one day from the karate academy in the middle of exercises.

The tragicomedy won the best screenplay award at the 16th Cheboksary International Film Festival in Russia last June.

The cast includes Behrang Alavi, Hamed Behdad, Baran Kosari, Nader Soleimani, and Siavash Cheraghipour among others.

Jeonju International Film Festival is an Asian film festival. It was launched in 2000 as a non-competitive film festival with partial competition. It introduces independent and experimental films to focus on the alternative course of contemporary film art. JIFF also features an experimental section called Expanded Cinema (formerly called Stranger than Cinema).

SS/SAB