This year’s festival will screen 159 feature films, deliberately down on the 220-plus of previous years. One of the biggest changes is that red carpet galas and special presentations will take place at the Royal Festival Hall on an 18-meter screen.

In its first international debut, ‘A Hero’ won the Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix award, jointly with ‘Compartment No. 6,’ by Juho Kuosmanen.

Farhadi’s latest film has also recently been invited to the Toronto Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Melbourne Film Festival in Australia, New Horizons Film Festival in Poland, and Miami Gems section of the 39th edition of the Miami Film Festival in Florida, and the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, the US, IRNA reported.

‘A Hero’ is the story of Rahim who is in prison because of a debt he was unable to pay. During a two-day leave, he tries to convince his creditor to withdraw his complaint against the payment of part of the sum. But things don’t go as planned, IMDB wrote.

Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Fereshteh Sadr-Orafai and Sarina Farhadi starred in the drama.

Farhadi has received two Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film for his films ‘A Separation’ (2011) and ‘The Salesman’ (2016), making him one of the few directors worldwide who have won the category twice. He also received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay for his film ‘The Salesman’.

According to theguardian.com, more female filmmakers will feature in the galas and special presentations of this year’s BFI London film festival, which organizers say is a sign the industry is heading in the right direction.

This year’s BFI London Film Festival will feature 21 film world premieres including the opening movie, Jeymes Samuel’s western, ‘The Harder They Fall,’ starring Idris Elba, and an animated sci-fi comedy, ‘Ron’s Gone Wrong,’ the first film from the UK studio Locksmith Animation.

The festival has, in recent years, been upfront about gender disparity in film. In 2017, a quarter of films at the festival were directed by women. In 2018, the figure was 38%. This year, 39% of the program is from female directors/creators or co-directors.

The BFI London Film Festival is an annual film festival founded in 1957 and held in the United Kingdom, running for two weeks in October with co-operation from the British Film Institute. It screens more than 300 films, documentaries and shorts from approximately 50 countries.

Source: Iran Daily