The Iranian film Wednesday May 9, directed by Vahid Jalilvand, won Reykjavík International Film Festival‘s first prize, the Golden Puffin, as Discovery of the Year 2015.
The film, which is a combination of three stories, starring Niki Karimi, was strongly praised by the Hollywood Reporter, which writes, “The humanism of the finest Iranian cinema shines through the clouds of sadness in Wednesday, May 9, which explores the suffering of the un-moneyed classes and a strange philanthropist who aims to help them.”
In an acceptance speech from abroad, the director described the movie as made for one word: chivalry. He recounted an old story of an Iranian man who came to a city and was surprised that everyone in the cemetery had died at a very early age, sometimes as young as one or two years. When he asked for an explanation, he was told, “Their real age is the years they were chivalrous. The rest is in vain.”
