TEHRAN-- The 13th edition of the Ammar Popular Film Festival opened on Wednesday at Shah Cheragh, the shrine of Ahmad ibn Musa (AS), with a homage to the victims of the Shiraz terrorist attack.Several pilgrims visiting the Shia website in the southern Iranian city were eliminated in the attack carried out by ISIS last October.

Established in 2010 by a number of Iranian revolutionary figures, the festival has been named after Ammar Yasir, a close buddy of the Prophet Muhammad (S).

The Ammar festival represents the revolutionaries concern after the 2009 sedition, Argentinean Muslim cleric Edgardo Robin who is the new president of the festival said throughout the opening ceremony.The unrest that emerged after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of the June 12 presidential election in 2009 is considered as sedition in Iranian officials culture.Robin who utilizes the name Soheil Asaad after his conversion to Shia Islam, stated that a need for releasing an occasion such as the Ammar celebration was felt after the revolutionaries, unfortunately, were not permitted to evaluate the documentary films they produced to represent the truth due to the structure of Iranian movie theater and media.

Robin believes the celebration now supplied the chance and structure for the revolutionaries to present their films.He called the Ammar celebration a borderless cinema that provides everyone a passport and everybody can be a film activist unconditionally.

He kept in mind that the celebration is a motion for raising individualss knowledge of media.The Ammar Policy-Making Council selected Robin to change Nader Talebzadeh, who passed away last April.As a graduate of the Beirut Arab University in Lebanon and Al-Mustafa International University in Qom, he has been taking a trip across the world to promote Shia Islam.About 2800 films are contending in the various areas of the celebration, which is being organized at Tehrans Felestin Cinema.

The winners of several categories were honored throughout the opening event as the top movies of the official competition will be awarded on January 12.

Picture: Ammar Popular Film Festival president Edgardo Robin speaks throughout the opening ceremony at Shah Cheragh in Shiraz, January 4, 2023.

(ISNA/Mohammadreza Dehdari)MMS/YAW