Trust cinema Hassan Lotfi in The newspaper of trust He wrote: I don’t know if my interest in film festivals comes from happy memories that have entered my life during different years at film festivals, or if it is related to the conditions that festivals provide to see many films in a short time.
Maybe it is related to the margins that are provided during the festival and in a few days cinema becomes important for many viewers and cinema officials. Of course, I do not rule out the possibility that there are other reasons behind this interest.
The reasons that may have hidden themselves in the back of my mind and will not show themselves soon. I am sure that the reason for this interest is not the effect of festivals on the country’s filmmaking process. Not that I don’t belong to the growth of Iranian cinema, I do! (Can you be a cinema lover and film lover and not want your country’s cinema to be in the best possible shape?!) I don’t mind and it doesn’t matter that every festival held takes Iranian cinema one step higher. But I don’t think it was like that.
With the 36th International Festival of Children and Youth Films, we felt that this cinema has improved a lot compared to the first festival held in 1361 and, in other words, has gone up 36 steps.
While this is not the case. A look at the history of Iranian cinema says that this is not the case. Let’s not go far. Let’s go back to the sixties and review some of the films for children and teenagers of that decade. The City of Mice, Bibi Chalcheleh, Where is the friend’s house?, Basho Gharibeh Koch, Gal, etc. show a variety and charm that has not been seen in Iranian children’s and youth cinema for several years.
I don’t deny the few good movies in the following decades, but we can’t make a list of the best movies for children and teenagers and the movies of the sixties and seventies are not at the top of this list. I know that to make a good film we need a good artist more than anything else, but among those who made the first-class films of those decades, there were good filmmakers who fortunately are still alive (Bahram Bayzaei, Abolfazl Jalili, Marzieh Borund, etc.) And Namani like Pourahmad and Kiarostami were there until the end of the nineties and could have made films and… why they didn’t make them and why Iranian children’s and youth cinema has become more and more thin and suffering is an important issue.
With a thumbs-up and touristy look, it shows that the festival is not a festival for children and youth cinema. This cinema needs another version to prosper and return to the top (not the institution that produces government and commissioned films!). It calls for another appeal.