“Exam”, “Talker” win awards at Tirana Intl. Film Festival

TEHRAN –(Iranart)- Iranian movies “Exam” and “Talker” were honored with awards during the closing ceremony of the 18th Tirana International Film Festival in the Albanian capital, the organizers announced on Friday.

Directed by Sonia Haddad “Exam” received the award for Best Live Action Short Film.

“Exam” is about a teenage girl who gets involved in the process of delivering a pack of cocaine to a client, and gets stuck in a weird cycle of occurrences.

“A simple story that has illustrated enough about the position of women and youngsters against authority and repression,” the jury said in its statement.

“For its everlasting effect and progressive change of emotion, for its surprising cycle of events, for its lead teenager actress and her weary fatigued distinguished face that carried the story until a poignant closure,” they added.

“Talker” by Mehrshad Ranjbar won the award for Best Student Film. The movie is about an elderly woman who has cared for her infirm husband for many years until one day this habit ends.

The jury said, “For its unique poetic film language, for its concise artistic choices and its great usage of its space, for how the film feeds the slow narrative force exclusively through powerful silent images to result in a beautiful mosaic of quotidian life of an old couple shot in a cinematic way.”

The Iranian movies “Subjection” by Alireza Mirzai, “The Lock” by Ali Javan, “White Winged Horse” by Mahyar Mandegar and “Witness” by Ali Asgari were also screened at the festival. However, they failed to win an award.  

The Golden Owl for Best Feature Film went to “Zana”, a co-production between Kosovo and Albania by Antoneta Kastrati.

Dito Tsintsadze was selected as best director for “Inhale-Exhale” from Georgia, Russia and Sweden.

The award for best screenplay was presented to “Exile” written by Visar Morina. The film is co-produced by Germany, Belgium and Kosovo.

source: Tehran Times