Karun – The Longest River of Iran

Sahand Sarhaddi / Switzerland, Finland, Iran / 2024 / World Premiere / 19 min.

synopsis

On September 22, 1998, the Iranian poet Hamid Hajizadeh and his nine-year-old son Karun, whose name symbolically refers to Iran's longest river, were brutally murdered in their home in Kerman. The documentary film, based on the statements of the survivors, tries to sensitively reconstruct one of the many terrible, politically motivated events that took place in Iran at the end of the previous century, and draws us into the fateful day with the help of detailed shots of the objects in Hamid's study.

“And he asked, which one torments the other one; The places or the memories…?” — Shahriar Mandanipour

Source: Berlinale Talents

biography

Iranian filmmaker, screenwriter and visual artist Sahand Sarhaddi (1991) studied theatre and dramatic literature at Tehran University. In his short and feature-length work, he focuses on individual human stories forgotten by history and their depiction using non-traditional narratives and hybrid formats.