Cannes Film Festival 2025: In Türkiye, the despair of Iranian filmmakers
Thomas Guichard (in Istanbul)
Published on
Jean-Christophe Simon, Setareh Maleki, director Mohammad Rasoulof, Mahsa Rostami and Amin Sadraei attend the press conference for 'The Seed Of The Sacred Fig' during the 77th Cannes Film Festival, in Cannes, France, on May 25, 2024. CINDY ORD/POOL / EFE/MAXPPP
While Iranian directors are regularly invited to and awarded prizes at Cannes, part of the diaspora lives stuck in Istanbul, far from the European market.
Don't mention the Cannes Film Festival to Mehdi Shabani. Sitting on the terrace of a cultural center in Istanbul, this 50-year-old Iranian director recounts, while chain-smoking, how living in Turkey has distanced him from that world. "Cannes was a festival, that is to say, a meeting place for everyone, in the heyday of Cahiers du cinéma . It's become a market, " he says. "Cannes will never choose me, because the films of an exile in Istanbul don't resonate with European tastes." And the filmmaker, who has just finished "a poetic documentary" about a transvestite in Turkey, doubts that his latest film will be an exception.
This article is reserved for subscribers
La Croıx
