Yesterday the prestigious Hivos Tiger Award (worth €40,000) was presented to Babak Jalali’s second feature film “RADIO DREAMS”. His debut film “Frontier Blues” was included in 14th Sofia Film Fest’s programme in 2010 and his project “Land” was selected at Sofia Meetings in 2013.
“Frontier Blues” features 4 intertwined stories all set in Iran’s northern frontier with Turkmenistan, a region that has long been neglected in Iranian cinema, interesting not only for its magnificent, forlorn landscape but also for its multi-ethnic population of Persians, Turkmens and Kazakhs. It’s the story of longing, waiting, remembering, desperate men and absent women. It’s about not quite getting there. Wherever that may be. Frontier Blues features non-professional actors from Golestan, the Northern region of Iran, where the film was shot.
In his latest film “Radio Dreams” Jalali tells a story of a man who left for a country where he hardly spoke the language, but in Iran he was a respected author. Mister Royani (Mohsen Namjoo, a well-known musician in Iran) is head of programming at Pars Radio, a Persian radio station in San Francisco. He reads stories, receives guests and discusses topics of interest, such as ‘the history of apes in space’. But one day a very special event is planned: Metallica is going to jam in the studio with Kabul Dreams, the first rock band from Afghanistan. But first, everyday life intervenes, in a dryly comical way…
Born in Iran, Babak Jalali mainly lived in London and has a BA degree in Balkan / East European Studies, an MA degree in Politics from the University of London and also MA in filmmaking from the London Film School.
CONGRATULATIONS!