Two fantastic awards at Fantaspoa festival go to Iran’s ‘The Servant’
Short Iranian animated piece ‘The Servant’, directed by Farnoush Abedi, won the Audience Award and an honorable mention in the main competition section for short films at the 13th International Fantastic Film Festival of Porto Alegre (Fantaspoa) in Brazil.
According to the director, ‘The Servant’ narrates the familiar story of a master and his servant — the story of a writer’s encounter with a gigantic insect: A cock-roach. The cockroach becomes a servant but gradually begins to realize that it deserves better conditions, so it tries to turn the table and change the game in its own favor. The man, however, attempts to preserve the current status quo but soon realizes that the game has no rules.
Abedi’s film recently won the Best Short Animation award at the 2017 Silver Scream Festival in California, the US and the best short animation award for February at 14th London Independent Film Festival, fantaspoa.com wrote.
Created in 2005, Fantaspoa — International Fantastic Film Festival of Porto Alegre — was the pioneer festival dedicated to bringing fantastic films to Brazil.
Fantaspoa is a 17-day festival, using four screening rooms and exhibiting over 100 films yearly. This year’s edition ran from May 19 to June 4, screening 120 films and hosting over 65 special guests.
Over its 12 years, Fantaspoa became the biggest genre festival in Latin America and the main film event in the city of Porto Alegre and is now a reference for several artists as one of the most convivial festival experiences and a great window of exhibition for fantastic films in Brazil.
He added that 1,614 works by 558 cartoonists from 75 countries have been submitted to the secretariat of the event of which 168 cartoonists are from Iran, and the rest from the Far East, Indonesia, China, Japan to the US and European countries.
“Four of the best American cartoonists have submitted works to the event. When we held talks with them, we realized that the people in the US despise Trump very much,” Shojai-tabatabaei said.
He noted that politics had a strong impact on bringing attention to the contest, adding, “Most of the submitted works are from Latin America with 55 cartoonists from Brazil alone.”
He pointed out, “Trump is a metaphor for us, and we will look into a certain way of thinking in this contest that is based on hatred and racism.”
The contest will be held on July 3, concurrent with the anniversary of the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by USS Vincennes which resulted in the loss of 290 lives of innocent civilians.