A new section has been created this year for the 62nd Prades-France Film Festival. It includes a particular program to showcase every year the works of women filmmakers from different countries. In the first round, the spotlight is on Iranian cinema, with both short and feature films being shown in parallel. Out of more than thirty film submissions, eight short films were selected for the competition section this year, which are:
1. Do not tell anyone (Sahar Sotoudeh) 2. Shiyleh (Marjan Safa Bakhsh) 3. Bahar (Faezeh Karimpour) 4. Spotted Yellow (Baran Sarmad) 5. Flasher (Pantea Mehdinia) 6. Purgatoire (Qasideh Golmakani) – 7. American Bull (Aseman Toosi) 8. Performance (Behnaz Eskandarnejad).
The short films will be screened on Thursday, July 22, in front of an audience. The jury of Prades-France Film Festival for this edition are Christine Aime (Cannes Film Festival Press Officer and New Director of the World Heritage Section – For Cannes 2022), Louise Foy (Wild Bunch Filmologist and Member of Scenario Reading Council), Stéphane Goudet, Professor of Cinema, Critic of Positif Magazine and Director of Art and Experience Cinemas in Paris, and Mohammad Haghighat (Critic, author of the book History of Iranian Cinema in French, Cinematographer and former consultant of Cannes Film Festival).
The best film will receive an award of 800 euros and the second one 500 Euros. There is a possibility that a collection of these shorts will be shown in an art and experience cinema in Paris.
Apart from short films, in the section dedicated to Iranian women filmmakers, there are also four feature films planned for the festival; these films are Tales (Rakhshan Bani-Etemad) – The Day I Became a Woman (Marzieh Meshkini) – Phi Phi Howls of Happiness (Mitra Farahani) and, The Son (Noushin Mearaji). Ten from Abbas Kiarostami will also be screened on the final day of the festival. The festival starts on July 17 and ends on July 23.