For the first time, an Iranian film will take part in the Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival, which will be held from June 12-18 at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and other venues. This year’s festival will host a distinguished list of international guests and will feature dozens of films from student filmmakers around the world, with competitions for both movies from abroad and Israeli films, as well as for digital films and video art. There will also be a television pitching event this year.
The Iranian film The Fourth Wall, by Mahbubeh Kalai, uses animation to tell the story of an imaginative child who stutters and it will take part in the international competition. It was previously shown at the Sundance Film Festival and was produced at Iran’s Documentary and Experimental Film Center.
Among the guests this year will be Sebastian Lelio, the Chilean director who made Gloria Bell, A Fantastic Woman and Disobedience; Mia Hansen-Love, the French filmmaker whose films include Bergman Island and Things to Come; Albert Serra, the Catalan director who made Liberte and The Death of Louis XIV; Nana Ekvtimishvili, the Georgian director of My Happy Family; German director Angele Schanelec, who made I Was Home But...; Gökhan Tiryaki, the Turkish cinematographer who worked on Winter Sleep and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia by Nuri Bilge Ceylan; and Para One, the French composer-director who wrote the music for Petit Maman and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. The judges will include acclaimed Cambodian director Rithy Panh (The Missing Picture).
In addition to screenings, master classes and other events, the festival will feature the Cinema Bus for the 11th year, which visits cities and towns in the periphery and shows films made by local youth.
The festival is produced and run by the students of the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University, who volunteer out of a passion for filmmaking. It is considered one of the most important festivals in the world for student films. For more details, visit the festival website at https://www.taufilmfest.com.