Foreign producer says Iranian cinema always milestone

Pompili made the remarks in the 30th International Film Festival for Children and Youth which started work on June 30 in Isfahan, central Iran.

The international event brings audiences a packed seven days of films for children. More than 50 films and guests from 44 countries are accepted to the festival with additional workshops taking place in Isfahan. Instructors from Sweden, Nigeria and Iran will cover various courses.

Answering a question on elaborating on his focus on children in his work, Pompili said first of all Kino produzioni's main goals are to research and develop a new cinema point of view strongly linked with reality. Kino is working to develop a new generation of emerging talents often coproducing with international production companies.

Last year, Kino's lineup was focused on parenthood and relationship between parents and children. We premiered IL PIÚ GRANDE SOGNO, debut feature film directed by Michele Vannucci in Orizzonti Competition at Venice Film Festival, ValparaIso by Carlo Sironi was awarded of Prize Video und Surtitlung at Pardi di Domani competition at Locarno and ‘The Silence’ by Iranian director Farnoosh Samadi and Ali Asgari was premiered in the short film competition at 69th Cannes Film Festival.

In the same year Kino set up the social film literacy project “TOR SAPIENZA FILM LAB” engaging teenagers in the outskirt of Rome. The Lab result is Almost Heroes by Giovanni Piperno, a short film that won the Nastro D'ARGENTO award. From this experience a feature film is developing co-produced with Matteo Garrone’s Archimede.

But the main result was giving the kids involved in the project some tools not only to deal with comprehension of cinema but tools that help them to deal with life. In one of our upcoming project we are dealing with two young twins that have to deal with a big issue and they succeed in a nice and ironic way.

In response to a question whether having a separate festival for children and youth can improve and promote children cinema, he said, 'We are travelling around the world with our short film Il Silenzio and we are choosing the best events to show our film, as ICFF is. And of course we would like to have our film in Iranian festivals and this festival match exactly in both our needs.'

Children and youths are massively exposed to tons of audio-visual products shaped in different forms.

I think a separate festival can help to have a place and a moment to discuss and reflect on the consumption and the impact of the industry on the global youth.

He went on to say that Iranian cinema has always been a milestone in the history of cinema, from the first wave to the last success. I love how directors liked Kiarostami work with children to reflect and explore the complexity of the world. That is what we have to deal on the movie business. Children film industry nowadays is mainly focused on entertainment and animation. But I truly believe that “cinema for children” has to be entertaining of course but also have to explore emotions and feelings.

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