TEHRAN – The 8th Iranian Film Festival in Tokyo will take place from August 8 to 10 in Japan, screening seven films from Iran with Japanese subtitles.

Organized by the Cultural Center of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Tokyo, the three-day event will be held at the Minato City Gender Equality Center Libra Hall, ILNA reported.

The festival is open to the public, and the audience can experience Iranian culture through films, as film is a universal language that promotes dialogue between cultures and nations.

The lineup includes “On the Zero Line,” a co-production of Iran and Japan directed by Mehrdad Ghaffarzadeh and Yoshimasa Jinbo, “Gholamreza Takhti” by Bahram Tavakoli, “No Prior Appointment by Behrouz Shoaybi, “The Warden” by Nima Javidi, “Tears of the Reedbed” by Mehdi Jafari, “Leaf of Life” by Ebrahim Mokhtari, and “Ameneh’s Golden Blood” by Habib Ahmadzadeh.

Japanese violinist Tsumuji's music video “Cloudy Isfahan,” filmed in Iran, will be screened in the opening ceremony of the festival on August 8, and the audience can enjoy the beautiful scenery of the ancient city of Isfahan paired with Tsumuji's melodies.

The Iranian-Japanese co-production “On the Zero Line” is about a lost-for-words poet who meets a woman who has suffered a miscarriage on the equator. Two emotions intersect at zero degrees latitude.

Produced in 2022, the 76-minute movie is made in the Dadaist style, a short-lived French movement that became the origin of Surrealism. Chance is an important element in Dadaist works. A literary example is the random selection and combination of multiple words.

“On the Zero Line” was created by two directors, Ghaffarzadeh and Jinbo, from different regions of Iran and Japan, without any prior knowledge of the story. From opposite sides of the globe, they each created a fictional male and female character and traveled to Kenya, Africa, right on the equator. There, they experienced the story firsthand and wrote the ending to their shared story.

“Gholamreza Takhti” is a 2019 biographical drama film about the renowned Iranian freestyle wrestler Gholamreza Takhti from his childhood till adulthood, his matches, and finally his death.

“No Prior Appointment” tells the story of an Iranian emigrant who, after 30 years, is compelled to return to her home country upon learning of her estranged father’s death. She hastily takes leave from her work as a doctor in Berlin, Germany, bringing her young autistic son with her, which makes the trip challenging for her. She achieves a new understanding of humanity and death during her short trip to Iran and meetings with her father’s friends.

“The Warden” is a 2019 mystery drama. It stars Navid Mohammadzadeh and Parinaz Izadyar. Set in 1967 in Iran, Mohammadzadeh plays Major Nemat Jahed, the warden of a prison, who is being evacuated for expansion, whilst one of the prisoners is missing.

In “Leaf of Life,” a director enthusiastically shoots a documentary film about the cultivation and harvest of saffron in a small town in north-east Iran. He agreed to do this work to earn enough money to buy a house in Tehran. However, prices in the real estate business are rising, and he gets worried. Instead of focusing on the direction of his film, he spends time with his producer, who is supposed to find him the house of his dreams, until the day he is told that, in fact, he has already bought a flat. The conditions of shooting are not easy either because of the director's demands. The farmers, particularly one old man, are reluctant.

“Tears of the Reedbed” deals with a period in the life of martyr Ali Hashemi, and “Ameneh’s Golden Blood” is a documentary about a girl from Bushehr, whose extensive international efforts to find rare blood and save her life are coordinated by the blood transfusion organization. 

SS/SAB