‘Starless Dreams’ to go on screen in two intl. festivals

Iranian director Mehrdad Oskouei's portrait of teenage inmates, Starless Dreams, will be present in sixth annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival in Nairobi. The festival is scheduled to convene from 8 - 12 November, 2017.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) Film Festival currently screens in over 20 cities around the world throughout the year. The festival's programming committee operates out of the New York office to screen more than 500 films each year. The HRW Film Festival brings to life human rights abuses through storytelling in a way that challenges each individual to empathize and demand justice for all people.

Oskouei himself had travelled to Japan to take part at the fifteenth Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival to be held October 5-12, 2017. The festival is a documentary film festival held biennially in Yamagata, Japan. Its emphasis is on showcasing best achievements in documentary filmmaking, as well as promoting and popularizing the genre and documentary filmmaking in the region.

Starless Dreams narrates the lives of a group of young Iranian women who live together in a correctional and rehabilitation center for a variety of reasons ranging from drug dealing and trafficking, to pick-pocketing and manslaughter. Though bored with their incarcerated life, they are, nevertheless, scared about what might happen to them once outside. As the New Year approaches, they all hope to celebrate it with their families.

Mehrdad Oskouei is an Iranian filmmaker, producer, photographer and researcher born in Tehran in 1969 and later graduating in film direction from the University of Arts.  His films have been screened at numerous festivals both at home and abroad to great critical acclaim, making him one of the major Iranian documentary makers. In 2010 Oskouei received the Dutch Prince Claus Award for his achievements.

/SR