ZagrebDox picks “Anticlockwise”, “Sunless Shadows”

TEHRAN –(Iranart)- Iranian documentaries “Anticlockwise” and “Sunless Shadows” have been selected to compete in ZagrebDox, the Croatian international documentary festival.

In “Anticlockwise”, filmmaker Jalal Vafai tells the story of his family from 2011 to 2019, showing how their world has radically changed.

He focuses on his father, a devoted watchmaker in the Iranian city of Hamadan, who was on the side of the Islamic Revolution in his younger years. He has now become a democratic reformist, and is obsessed with the political news and injustice he sees around him. From his shop, he tries to find a way to deal with his disappointment in politics. At the same time, holding such democratic opinions isn’t without risk. 

“Sunless Shadows”, director Mehrdad Oskui’s acclaimed film, is a co-production between Iran and Norway and is also competing in the international section of the festival, which opened on Monday. 

The story of the documentary is set in an Iranian juvenile detention center, in which a group of adolescent girls are serving time for having murdered their father, husband or another male family member.

Oskui managed to build up a remarkable relationship with these inmates, whose frank conversations and playful interactions he observes, and who gradually open up about the consequences of, and sometimes the reasons for, their terrible act. He occasionally leaves them alone with the camera, allowing it to become a means for them to address both their victims and their accomplices, three of the girls having killed their fathers with the help of their mothers. The mothers await execution elsewhere.

The film was named best documentary at the 8th edition of CinéDOC-Tbilisi, a Georgian international documentary festival, last week.

ZagrebDox will end on October 11 with the announcement of winners.

source: Tehran Times