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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iranian filmmaker lashes out at "dictatorship" |
| 2009-09-21 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, forced to make his latest film "The White Meadows" under difficult conditions, used the San Sebastian film festival to lash out at the Tehran regime. The film, in competition for the festival's top Golden Shell award, tells the story of a man, Rahmat, who for many years has been tasked with collecting the tears of residents of several islands, although no one knows exactly what he has been doing with them. Told in the style of a traditional Iranian fable, it is a veiled attack on the Tehran regime. "I come from a country full of contradictions and suffering, where there is a dictatorship," and "censorship does not allow me to talk openly about what happens in my country," he told a news conference on Saturday evening. The film was shot in 58 days with both professional and non-professional actors in beautiful countryside by Lake Orumieh, which is dotted with rocky islets covered with salt crystals. "The conditions were very difficult, we had trouble getting permission, our budget was very limited.... It was a clandestine, underground film. "It is very difficult to make independent cinema in Iran, we don't have subsidies and we don't have the right to show our films in Iran." |
| Posted by:Fred |