TEHRAN – Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi serves as the President of the Regional Competition Jury of the 22nd Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival that kicked off on Sunday in Armenia.

The festival will also show three movies by Naderi, including “The Runner” (1984), “Harmonica” (1974), and “Waiting” (1974), ISNA reported.

A pioneer of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, Naderi, 78, is a leading figure of the so-called “Second Wave” alongside Abbas Kiarostami and Majid Majidi.

He is also a close collaborator of the legendary Bahram Beyzai, an artist whose work has been exhibited at MoMA and who has inspired both Iranian and American filmmakers such as Sean Baker and Kelly Reichardt. Naderi was among the first to pave the way for the global recognition of Iranian cinema.

As a filmmaker, he drew inspiration from Henri Cartier-Bresson’s urban experience and photography of everyday life, as well as the aesthetics of Italian neorealist cinema — including location shooting, use of non-professional actors, freer narrative structures, and a focus on the hardships of the poor and working class.

Naderi gave fundamental impetus to the birth of Iranian cinema during the 1970s and 80s, with several masterpieces destined to leave their mark on the history of cinema.

Born in the southern city of Abadan, Naderi made his directorial debut with “Goodbye Friend” in 1971 and soon became one of the best-known figures in the film industry.

He entered the international spotlight with “Tangsir” (1974). “The Runner” (1985) and “Water, Wind, Soil” (1989) both won the Golden Montgolfiere at the Three Continents Festival in Nantes. “The Runner” is considered by many critics to be one of the most influential films of the past quarter century. 

The prominent director moved to the U.S. in the mid-80s and made “Sound Barrier,” which won the Roberto Rossellini Critics’ Prize at the Rome Film Festival in 2005, and “Vegas: Based on a True Story,” which premiered in competition at Venice in 2008.

He was named a Rockefeller Film and Video Fellow in 1997 and has served as an instructor at Columbia University, the University of Las Vegas, and New York's School of Visual Arts. His US films have premiered at the Film Society of Lincoln Center/ MoMA's New Directors/New Films series, the Venice, Cannes, Tribeca, and Sundance FF.

His Japan-set “The Cut,” a homage to yakuza (crime syndicates) movies, opened the Venice Horizons section in 2011. Naderi was also in Venice in 2014 with “Mise En Scene: A Conversation with Arthur Penn,” in the classics section.

Due to smaller distribution and advertising budgets, Naderi's films are not as well-known as most Hollywood films. Despite that and the lack of recognizable actors in most of his films, his work tends to find distribution (mainly in Europe and Japan), and he has earned a great deal of critical acclaim. 

Naderi's films and photography are also frequently the subject of retrospectives at major festivals and museums worldwide.

The 22nd edition of the “Golden Apricot” Yerevan International Film Festival will run until July 20. Once again, the festival is presenting competition films from around the world, along with selections from the most prestigious film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and others.

One of the films participating in the Regional Panorama Competition section is “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” by Sepideh Farsi.

The 112-minute France/Palestine film is the filmmaker’s response to the ongoing massacre of Palestinians. Farsi thinks that a miracle happened when she met Fatima Hassouna. She became her eyes in Gaza, where she resisted while documenting the war, and Farsi became a link between her and the world, from her “Gaza prison,” as she named it. 

They maintained this line of life for almost a year. The bits of sound and pixels that they exchanged became the film. The killing of Fatima on April 16, due to an Israeli raid on her house, changes its meaning forever.

Founded in 2004, the Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival is an annual film festival that seeks to present new works by film directors and producers in Armenia and around the world to promote creativity and originality in the area of cinema and video art.

SS/SAB