‘Rona, Azim’s Mother’, a coproduction between Afghanistan and Iran by Tehran-based Afghan brothers Jamshid and Navid Mahmoudi, won an award at the 68th edition of International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg in Germany.
Mahmoudi brothers received the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the German festival, IRNA wrote.
The festival prizes were not awarded this year by a jury, but by the audience, according to the event’s organizers.
Starring Iranian actors Mohsen Tanabandeh and Mojtaba Pirzadeh, the film is about Azim, an Afghan refugee who works as a janitor in Tehran. While helping his mother and his brother’s family plan to traffic themselves into Germany, he feels betrayed by his brother when he abandons their mother.
“The film moves us because Azim is amongst us, in our society, within each of us. How do you live with death, when does life end, how far are you willing to go for what and who is holy to you? The path to the end of life can only be taken, when we hold on to one another in love and let each other go in love,” writes the festival in praise of the film.
The film was screened on November 14, 15 and 18 in Mannheim, and on November 15 and 16 in Heidelberg in the presence of the Mahmoudi brothers.
‘Rona, Azim’s Mother’ had previously won the Cultural Diversity Award under the patronage of UNESCO at the 13th Asia Pacific Screen Awards, as well as the Kim Jiseok Award at the 23rd Busan International Film Festival, and the best film award at the 2019 Sama Film Festival in Sweden.
IranDaily