Friday, May 08, 2009

Three Iranian films to be screened with age restrictions

Three Iranian films will be screened with age restrictions in cinemas both in Tehran and provincial cities. This has been happening to a number of films now and then during thepast few years, but only for a few of them. The films, namely Harim (the zone) directed by Reza Khatibi which was screened on Wednesday and "the postman would knock on the door only for three times" by Hassan Fathi and "the hut" by Javad Afshar which are in the schedule for the silver screen later on the year, will be focusing on the age of the viewers when selling tickets. These films, together with another one called "the shadow of horror" directed by Emad Assadi, were screened with the same age restriction during the last International Fajr Film Festival for having too violent or horrifying scenes. Prior to this, the Iranian cinema had experienced only a very few cases for which age restrictions was necessarily applied. For example, youngsters below the age of 18 were banned from watching "the calamities of Shirin" by Alireza Dacoudnezhad while people below 16 were not recommended to see "Parkvey" directed by Fereydoun Jirani, for its belonging to the horror film genre. One thing to note here is that these limitations were never strictly applied to these films. here