“The Fourth Wall” hailed at Leeds Film Festival

TEHRAN – The 35th edition of the Leeds International Film Festival has awarded an honorable mention to Iranian animation “The Fourth Wall”.

Directed by Mahbubeh Kalai, the film shows a stuttering boy who transforms Iranian cuisine into a fantastic cosmos. The father’s body becomes a refrigerator, the mother’s womb a washing machine whose spinning gives birth to a screaming baby. Even birds on tiles and detergents have surprising lives.

This exuberant animation, interspersed with real-life elements – fried eggs, broken plates, pieces of cheese – develops a subtle spirit, ironicizing rooted family models.

The organizers called the animated short surreal scenes from domestic life that are confusing and compelling.

Produced at the Tehran Documentary and Experimental Film Center, emerging director Mahbubeh Kalai mixed animated objects with hand-painted illustrations and filmed them using a traveling camera. The result is an innovative method that brilliantly blurs the lines between fiction and reality.

The film won the Zlatko Grgic Prize at the 31st Animafest Zagreb in Croatia.

The winners of the Leeds Festival were announced last week as “Love Is Just a Death Away” directed by Bara Anna Stejskalova from Czech was selected as best animation, and “Amayi” by Subarna D from India was another animation which won an honorable mention in this category.

“Love Is Just a Death Away” is a dark and comedic yet eerily uplifting story about Steve, a parasite, who lives inside a skeleton in a huge apocalyptic dump. Desperate to find a soul mate, he tries to develop a meaningful bond with any future corpse, a very special love story.

Alisha Tejpal’s Indian drama “Lata” was selected as the best film in the Louis Le Prince International Short Film Competition.

Lata, a 23-year-old domestic worker, makes her way into a middle-class house in southern Mumbai. The doors are constantly opening and closing, giving Lata selective access to the various opposing realities that occupy this space.

Photo: “The Fourth Wall” by Mahbubeh Kalai.

MMS / YAW