The press conference for the 43rd Fajr International Film Festival was held on Saturday, November 22, at the Cinema Museum in Tehran, with Festival Director Rouhollah Hosseini addressing the media. The festival will take place in Shiraz from November 26 to December 3, 2025.
Hosseini provided an overview of this year’s program, which features four competitive sections – International Competition, Eastern Vista, Future Frame, and The Broken Olive – alongside non-competitive segments including Restored Films, Contemporary Turkish Cinema, and Festival of Festivals.
In the International Competition, sixteen films from countries including Romania, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Norway, and Sweden will compete. Eastern Vista, dedicated to Asian cinema, features twelve films including India, the USA, China, Malaysia, and Egypt. Future Frame, or the Competition of First and Second Films, will screen eleven titles, while The Broken Olive presents six films, including several co-productions.
The Contemporary Turkish Cinema section, curated to celebrate the Iran–Turkey Cultural Year, highlights works by prominent Turkish filmmakers, with some titles also participating in the competitive sections. Renowned Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan will attend as a special guest. The Festival of Festivals will showcase five films that have previously shined at major international festivals. Eight Iranian films are included across various sections.
On the festival’s poetic approach, Hosseini said: “We live in a land where poetry is not just an art form but a worldview. The greatest achievement can be connected to cinema, our most significant cultural expression. A poetic perspective is a way of seeing that resonates with our identity, and we wanted to reflect this vision in the films we selected.”
Regarding the choice of Shiraz as the host city, he explained: “For years, Iran’s Ministry of Culture has aimed to decentralize cultural events from Tehran. This was a perfect opportunity to bring the festival to a city with strong cultural infrastructure. Our poetic approach made it even more fitting to hold the festival in a city closely associated with poetry and literature.”
Hosseini emphasized that the festival’s selection of countries and films focused on “quality and approach”, adding: “Poetic cinema is not merely a theme; it is an approach. We carefully selected works that best reflect this vision.”
The festival will also feature media workshops and panels discussing poetic cinema and acting, along with the Talent Campus, led by Iranian director, presenter, and screenwriter Iraj Tahmasb. This section will host 60 cinema students, including 22 from Iran, all of whom have experience making their first films, with Iranian filmmakers serving as mentors.
In addition, the festival will hold a “special photography and film segment”, with over 3,000 photos and 500 videos submitted for evaluation.
