He expressed his regrets that six minutes of the documentary was cut out during the screening at the 27th Fajr Film Festival.

“I was informed before the beginning of the festival that my documentary was accepted in the festival but also that it needed several changes,” he told the Persian service of ISNA.

“Several other directors and I expressed our objections to the decision and asked for a review meeting with the deputy culture minister for cinematic affairs, but the final decision was to delete six minutes from the film,” he added.

He stressed that these forms of auditing do great harm to movies, adding, “The documentary was previously screened at several other programs and in private screenings and undoubtedly, viewers would notice the difference.”

Afarideh also criticized improper advertising of documentary cinema during the Fajr festival and said that generally, Iran’s documentary cinema does not enjoy a large number of viewers, “I believe this sort of cinema has its own special audience and perhaps there is no need for any form of auditing as is done with other types of movies.”

“Festival officials declared the 34-minute documentary might be too long for viewers, despite the fact that this movie won the best audience film award at Tehran’s Short Film Festival,” he remarked.

The documentary previously named “As Old as Rey” tells the story of the last generation of narrators of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. The film is narrated by Iran’s only female narrator of Shahnameh, Fatemeh Habibizad, who is also known as Gordafarid.

Photo: Fatemeh Habibizad known as Gordafarid in a scene from “Narration of Gordafarid”