Tag Archives: Merila Zarei

Iranian actress Merila Zarei wins award at the 2014 Asia Pacific Screen Awards in Australia

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Merila Zarei has won the Best Actress Award at the 8th Asia Pacific Screen Awards for her role in the Iranian war drama ‘Track 143’ directed by female filmmaker Narges Abyar.

Iranian actress Merila Zarei has been honored at the 8th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) festival held in Australia. She won the APSA for Best Actress for her role in the acclaimed Iranian war drama ‘Track 143’ directed by female filmmaker Narges Abyar.

The movie premiered at Iran’s 2014 Fajr International Film Festival and garnered rave reviews from critics and audiences. Track 143 is a screen adaptation of Abyar’s novel, The Third Eye, which tells the story of a woman during Iran’s sacred defense. The film has been presented at a number of international festivals and has won several awards.

Iranian film ‘I’m Not Angry’ directed by Reza Dormishian was also awarded the APSA Academy NETPAC Development Prize.

Iranian cinematic productions were nominated for awards in five categories at this year’s APSA. ‘Melbourne’, directed by Nima Javidi, was nominated for the best screenplay award. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad was also one of the nominees for the best director at this year’s festival for her celebrated drama ‘The Tales’.

Award-winning Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi presided over the six-member jury panel of this year’s APSA. He is a three-time APSA winner including Best Screenplay and the Jury Grand Prize for ‘About Elly’ in 2009, as well as Best Film for ‘A Separation’ in 2011.

Some 36 screen productions from 21 regional countries competed in this year’s festival. The 2014 APSA was held in Brisbane’s historic City Hall on December 11.

Sources: Iran Front Page, Bing Image Search

“A Separation”, first Iranian movie to win the Oscar academy award

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A Separation (Persian: Jodái-e Náder az Simin, “The Separation of Nader from Simin”) is a 2011 Iranian drama film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi.

Farhadi focuses on a middle class family in Tehran to explore the tensions and challenges of modern Iran. By examining class, religious and gender conflict through the intimate lens of family life, he highlights the interconnection between the personal and political. The lecture identifies and analyses the multiple pressure points within the film narrative and the central idea that the very things that connect us as human beings also separate us.

A Separation won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012, becoming the first Iranian film to win the award. It received the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bears for Best Actress and Best Actor at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the first Iranian film to win the Golden Bear. It also won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

The film was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award, making it the first non-English film in five years to achieve this.

Nader and Simin: A Separation (trailer):

Asghar Farhadi, 123 mins, Iran, 2011

Source: Wikipedia | A Separation, Australian Centre for the Moving Image | A Separation