TEHRAN-- The 41st edition of the Fajr International Film Festival opens tomorrow as the organizers have declined to announce the worldwide lineup in order to manage worldwide media pressure on the entries to withdraw from the event.Speaking at a press conference on Monday, the celebration president Mojtaba Amini called the worldwide media pressure an abroad war launched to weaken the festival.The festival is a major film event, which is organized every year to commemorate the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.In calls released on social media and some Persian tv networks transmitting from abroad, groups of Iranian film celebrities have actually asked their coworkers to boycott the celebration in assistance of the unrest that emerged versus the Iranian federal government from September 2022.

We have actually been in a crucial situation.

The abroad media have actually started serious attacks and they still are continuing, said Amini who is most well-known for producing the questionable TV series Gando on the true story of the major espionage case of Jason Rezaian, an Iranian-American journalist who worked as Tehran bureau chief for the Washington Post.

We have taken effective procedures to assist the festival ship dock in the port with the really least quantity of damage, he added.

The intent of the abroad war is to cause damage to the worldwide section of the celebration.

To counteract that effort, we wish to run it quietly, he noted.Amini stated that he has purposefully avoided making any comments about the limited issues over the previous few months to assist the festival affairs work out, and included that the international lineup will be announced in the upcoming days.He kept in mind that his silence about the issues was his vigilance to avoid any damage to the entries and those cineastes who have actually submitted their works to the event.Twenty-six films by filmmakers from 25 five nations have actually been chosen from 588 submissions to be showcased in the international competition of the festival.Amini called himself a film guy and asked Iranian cineastes to set aside ideological distinctions to help the festival go on well, emphasizing that the organizers welcome everyone.

Lets unite to make everyone feel happy and effort to raise hopes and awareness, he stated in conclusion.Fajrs international section categories split from the festival in 2014, when the Cinema Organization of Iran, which is associated with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the main organizer of the occasion, announced that the global competition would be held separately from the nationwide section for the first time in 2015.

Following the management modifications in the Cinema Organization of Iran in 2021, the new director of the company, Mohammad Khazaei, purchased that the Fajr national and worldwide film festivals be integrated again for 2022.

Picture: Fajr International Film Festival president Mojtaba Amini participates in a press conference at Tehrans Mellat Cineplex on January 30, 2023, to inform the media about the occasion.

(ISNA/Alireza Masumi) MMS/YAW