Iranian Filmmaker to Sit on Venice Film Festival’s Jury

She was awarded the Best Screenplay prize for her film ‘Tales’ at the 71st edition of the festival in 2014, Honaronline reported.

Banietemad is an internationally and critically acclaimed film director and screenwriter. Widely considered as Iran’s premier female director, her films have been commended at international festivals as they also are popular with home critics and audiences.

She was the first woman recipient of the Best Director Award at Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran for ‘Nargess’ in 1991. She won the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival for ‘The Blue Veiled’ in 1995.

Her next film, ‘Under the Skin of the City’, was the top box office in Iran in 2000. That film along with ‘Gilaneh’ (2005), ‘Mainline’ (2006) and ‘Tales’ (2014) won major awards in more than 50 film festivals.

Overseeing the jury for the competitive Horizons section is Italian director Gianni Amelio. In addition to Banietemad, the panel will include American director Ami Canaan Mann; Irish-Scottish filmmaker Mark Cousins; Argentine screenwriter and architect Andrés Duprat; Belgian filmmaker Fien Troch; and French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski.

The aim of the festival is to raise awareness and promote the various aspects of international cinema in all its forms: as art, entertainment and as an industry, in a spirit of freedom and dialogue. The festival also organizes retrospectives and tributes to major figures as a contribution to a better understanding of the history of cinema.

The line-up of the upcoming edition will be announced at a press conference in Rome on July 27.