The 36th Fajr International Film Festival has announced the jury panel for the First Films Award category.
According to the festival’s organizing committee, the three jury members are Viera Langerova (Slovakia), Barmak Akram (Afghanistan), and Mohammad Ali Bashe Ahangar (Iran).
The First Film Award category has just been added to the FIFF Awards, and has only one win in all competition and non-competition sections.
The jury members are:
Viera Langerova
Viera Langerová (PhD.) is a film critic, lecturer, festival consultant, curator and programmer. She studied film and theatre theory at the Academy of Arts University (Bratislava, Slovakia), and Cultural Studies at the Charles University (Prague, Czech).
She worked as editor in Slovak and Czech film periodicals. After living in Kazakhstan and Pakistan she did her dissertation on Asian film. She is author of the books Film Geography: Continental China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the travelogue Urdu, Parda, Burka. She gave film lectures in Baltic Film and Media School, Tallinn University in Estonia. As curator, she was involved in Focus on Kazakh Cinema (1999) and Focus on Kurdish Film (2013) for the IFF Karlovy Vary.
She works as programmer for ART Film Fest Košice, Slovak Republic. She is also FIPRESCI member, jury on IFF Istanbul, IFF Hong Kong, IFF Golden Horse, Taiwan, IFF Dhaka, Bangladesh, IFF Schlingel, and Chemnitz, Germany.
Barmak Akram
Barmak Akram was born in 1966 in Kabul. As an Afghan filmmaker, he lives in Paris, where he studied fine arts. His first feature film, Kabuli Kid (2008), won several awards and was screened at the Venice Film Festival.
In 2013, he received the Best Screenplay Award at the Sundance Film Festival for Wajma (An Afghan Love Story). He also made experimental and documentary films, including Toutes Les Teles Du Monde (2009).
Mohammad Ali Bashe Ahangar
Mohammad Ali Bashe Ahangar, born in 1962, graduated in Movie Directing from Tehran University of Art. He started his career with writing, directing and acting, and made a number of short 16 mm movies and documentaries. He worked as assistant director in 1997 on Rage Flames (Hamidreza Ashtianipour) and also co-wrote the script for Fly Over the Rooftops with Mohammadreza Gohari.
He directed his first feature, The Lost Half, in 1998, and three years later his second feature, Sugar Solution, made him a familiar name for critics and juries of festivals. The Child of Dust, which represents a touching image of the Iran-Iraq war, won the best script award of Fajr Film Festival and also was one of the big winners of Iran’s House of Cinema Annual Award.
Dreams Awakened 2010 and Queen 2012 won a number of awards in national festivals. Cypress Under Water, his latest movie, premiered in Fajr Film Festival and won a few awards including Best Set Design, Best Cinematography, and Best Movie from a National View.
Presided over by Iranian film writer and director Reza Mirkarimi, the 36th edition of Fajr International Film Festival will be held in Tehran on April 19-27. The festival is set to welcome over 300 special guests to this year’s edition, ranging from filmmakers to screenwriters, actors to activists. A host of A-listers will attend, including legendary Italian actor Franco Nero and influential American film director Oliver Stone.
