The International Resistance Film Festival has reached its fifteenth home. This international festival is being held with the efforts of the Narrative Cultural Foundation and the Revolutionary and Sacred Defense Cinema Association. This fifteen-year festival has gone through a winding path throughout its life, and its first edition was held under the secretaryship of Hossein Vakhshuri from September 21 to October 26, 1983.

Vakhshuri was also the secretary of the first Sacred Defense Festival. He was able to light the lamp of this festival, a festival titled Resistance, in the midst of the war, when the country was engaged in a war with the Iraqi Baath regime and difficult conditions prevailed in terms of human resources and financial resources. That is, precisely at a time when perhaps few people looked at films made on the subject of resistance as a cinematic movement and could not have predicted that 8 Years of Defense Against the Enemy could open up a new discourse literature from the perspective of art, and especially cinema, on the country’s resistance culture. This festival started at a time when many war filmmakers were not coming to the Fajr Festival and were not interested in having their films appear at that festival.

This year’s festival featured Mehdi Hojat (a cultural expert who graduated in architecture and is currently the deputy mayor of Tehran for urban planning and architecture), Mohammad Beheshti (a cultural expert who also graduated in architecture and has held various positions in the Cultural Heritage Organization), Mehdi Kalhor (a cultural expert/Kalhor was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s media advisor during his presidency), Sina Vaheed (a well-known researcher who has conducted numerous studies on music from an Islamic perspective, and some even consider Sina Vaheed to be the founder of the Fajr Music Festival), Mohammad Hossein Haghighi (a writer, director, and producer whose activities include managing the War Unit of the Islamic Republic of Iran Television), Bahram Raypour (a literature graduate/writer and film director who is perhaps the most experienced member of the jury in cinema, with experience writing and directing several works in his portfolio. Unfortunately, Raypour passed away in 1996 due to (died of cancer) were members of the jury.

It seems that the organizers of the first edition of the festival have tried to make their ideology the main focus of the festival from the very beginning and even in those circumstances use a team in the judging that consists of cultural experts, researchers and cinema people. They are determined that it is not a construction because it is the first edition, no matter how it is held. No, it must be what its title reflects in its result.

Also, the 2019 festival was held in two sections with the titles Golden Pen (Video Cinema) and Light Show (Screenplay), which although they are considered few and minimal in terms of the number of sections, it must be admitted that we are still examining the infancy of this festival and it is acceptable as a first step. A festival that is still in its infancy, obviously, cannot have high expectations from it. However, its awards were presented as follows.

*The commemorative plaque of this edition of the festival was awarded as follows:

_Best Short Documentary Film: “Abadan, the Oppressed City” by Mohammad Reza Eslamloo/Production of the Islamic Republic of Iran Television, IRGC Television Unit

The film’s synopsis states that: Abadan was constantly under heavy Iraqi artillery attacks during the Iran-Iraq War. Most of the people evacuated the city, but a group remained in the city and endured all the hardships and hardships. The film is the story of the people who did not evacuate the city.

“Abadan, the Oppressed City” depicted exactly the same ideology as the title of the festival – resistance – the resistance of a nation that is not willing to leave its land and home even under the ominous shadow of war. Those who have seen the film will never forget the opening scene of the film, a frail old man from Ahwazi who is sitting peacefully at the old wooden door of his house and, in response to the director’s question: “Father, what is this sound?” He smiles and says: “The sound of cannons, aren’t you paying attention?! War, war (pause) where do you come from? This (silence) sound of war, war” He talks about war, cannons and missiles as if he were talking about his memories of riding a bicycle.

_Best Feature Documentary: “Forty Witnesses” by the War Television Unit

The story of the film is about a group with the same title. This group was formed with an initial core of 40 Basij youth from the “Al-Jawad” Mosque in Ahvaz, who, under the supervision of “Martyr Hajj Esmail Farjavadi,” underwent initial training at the office of the Islamic Republic of Iran News Agency and under the supervision of a person named “Aurei.”

These people, who were selected by Hajj Alvan and chosen to form the group, were trained so that they could be present with Super 8 cameras alongside the fighters in various operations and take films and photographs of all the events of the war.

This group is one of the most important achievements of the War Propaganda Headquarters in 2012, which allowed an important part of the memories of the war to be recorded directly and completely truthfully. Half of this initial core of the Forty Witnesses group were martyred and missing by the end of the war. However, in the remaining seven years of the war, this core expanded and eventually reached 256 people.

This group was named Forty Witnesses because it consisted of forty Basij students who were sent to operations to record films and photographs with the fighters. At the suggestion of war photographer Mohsen Rastani, it was named Forty Witnesses.

“Forty Witnesses” is supposed to witness the martyrdom of martyrs whose images will one day appear on cinema screens, unaware that they themselves will one day be guests on these screens. I repeat, half of this initial core of the Forty Witnesses group were martyred and missing by the end of the war.

_Best Short Fiction Film: “My Teacher” by Gholamreza Janatkhah Doost / Produced by the Iranian Broadcasting Corporation