What is the significance of the Busan International Festival award to Majid Majidi's film for Iranian cinema?

Last Thursday at the 30th Busan International Film Festival, Majid Majidi won the best film award for "Ghazai Nimroz", which is an important event for Iranian cinema and the career of this author.

Ambassador Arjan: Majid Majidi's films are known in the world for their poetic expression and dealing with human sufferings and relationships, especially children. "Ghazai Nimroz" is also after "Khorshid" in which it used the combination of professional actors like Ali Nasirian and Javad Ezzati along with non-actors, it is a return to the genre of "Children of the Sky" cinema, which had almost no professional actors and faces, and its main feature in acting from non-actors was the concrete treatment of the characters and the camera with its calmness; The points that are also mentioned in the published reviews about "Midday Meal". By receiving the main award, Busan Majidi was placed on the path to Oscar and without being introduced as a representative of Iranian cinema, he was eligible to participate in this competition.

Majidi made "Ghazai Nimroz" in the silence of the news, within almost 2 years, and while there were talks that the first screening of it would take place at the 44th Fajr Film Festival last year, the film did not make it to the festival, or at least the guesses were that Majidi would prefer to try his luck in one of the important international festivals. The Cannes Film Festival seemed to be the most likely option, but when the film did not make it to Cannes, the suspicion was strengthened that Majidi suffered from the same problem of reluctance of international festivals to official works of Iranian cinema. However, with the start of the war on March 9 of last year, Majidi, who had taken a strict stance against the warmongers, did not seem to be concerned about the festival at all. In confirmation of this opinion, in a report from the Hollywood Reporter, Majidi said that this trip was very difficult for him and that Majidi did not want to leave Iran in a critical situation, but he finally went to Busan to convey a message to the people of the world. It is interesting that this year's Busan festival had the largest number of visitors since 2015.

As we said, the actors of the film are non-actors. Majidi himself said about choosing the actors of "Ghazai Nimroz": "I have a lot of respect for professional actors, but somehow I feel that they keep repeating themselves in different movies and this is not my method. "What I do is I look for a real person who is very similar in terms of characteristics and personality to the character I have created in my mind." Majidi's approach may seem extreme in realism, but the story of the film confirms his approach: Dawood Solan, played by Mohammad Rahimi, is a contract teacher whose continued work as a teacher and employment in education depends on providing free mid-day meals, which is the most important motivation for children to attend class. Majidi bases his narrative on the moral dilemma that the teacher seeks to prepare food to bring the children to school or simply so that his work position is not jeopardized. This story was accepted by the judges and Majidi returned to this festival with his hands full in his first appearance in Busan.

Majidi last made it to the initial short list in 2021 at Oscars 93 with "Khorshid". Among the important and international titles of Majidi's films, we should mention the Oscar nomination in 1998 with "Children of the Sky" and the Golden Bear nomination of the Berlin International Film Festival for "Song of the Sparrows" in 2008. Awards from Montreal, London, Gikhon, etc. are other achievements of this film director.

The cash prize of this film is 50 million South Korean won, equivalent to about 37 thousand dollars, and Majidi received the prize from Chinese director Zhang Lu and his compatriot Zhang Yimou, the head of the jury of the Busan festival.

Majidi's words after receiving the award in Busan

For 48 years, the people of Iran have been under the most severe economic and other sanctions, so that medical aid for children with cancer has also been withheld, but the people of Iran have not given up. When they saw that the people of Iran are unyielding, you witnessed that last year and this year our cities were subjected to the most brutal bombings many times. On the first day, 168 innocent children were bombed and dismembered in a school, so that the bodies of some of these children were not found and those that were found were dismembered. About 150 thousand residential houses, schools, hospitals and universities were bombed and 4-5 thousand people were lost during this time. What is the crime of our people? The crime of our people is that they only want independence and do not want to be under the burden of oppression and colonialism. They will fight for this and will stand until the end. I proudly present this award to the brave and courageous people of Iran who bravely stood up during these years and did not fall under the burden of oppression and continue to resist.