The 35th International Film Festival for Children and Youth will take place from October 2nd to 8th, 2023 in the historical city of Isfahan with the participation of Cinema Organization, Farabi Cinema Foundation and Isfahan Municipality. It is intended to promote peace and tolerance, realize moral values, raise awareness and hope among children and young adults, and to discover young talents in both competitive and non-competitive sections.
- A) Competitive Section
- Competition of feature films and animation
The Running time of the feature films should be at least 75 minutes. The following prizes will be awarded at the festival by the jury:
1) Golden Butterfly for the Best Film
2) Golden Butterfly for the Best Animation
3) Golden Butterfly for the Best Director of Feature Film
4) Golden Butterfly for the Best Director of Animation
5) Golden Butterfly for the Best Screenplay
6) Golden Butterfly for the Best Actor/Actress
7) Golden Butterfly for the Best Artistic Contribution (Zaven Ghoukasian Award)
8) Special Jury Prize
9) Prize for Promoting Moral and Peace Values (Behnam Mohammadi Award)
10) Prize for the Best Educational Film (Abu Nasr Farabi Award)
11) Merchandising
The festival director will present a special award to the director or one of the main crew members of the film.
The Children and Youth Jury also present an award to the director of their selected film.
- B) Competition of Short Films and Animation
The Running time of the short films should be a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 20 minutes.
The jury will dedicate the following prizes to the winners:
1) Golden Butterfly for the Best Short Film
2) Golden Butterfly for the Best Director of Short Film
3) Golden Butterfly for the Best Director of Short Animation
4) Special Jury Award
In this section, the director of the festival will dedicate his award to the director or one of the main crew members of the film.
Children and the Youth Jury will dedicate their prizes to the directors of their selected short film and the short animation.
- C) Non-Competitive Section
- Festival of the Festivals
In this section, the films already participated in prestigious national and international film festivals will be screened.
- Retrospective of the prominent Iranian or non-Iranian films
Rules & Regulations
1) Films will be selected by the Festival director.
2) Films not applied to the previous edition will be eligible to participate (those films which were not accepted in previous edition are not eligible).
3) Films which already had theatrical release in Iran are not eligible to apply.
4) All films will be classified into 2 age groups: children (5-9 years) and youth (10-17 years).
5) It is worth mentioning that the production date of Iranian films is from 1400 and foreign films from 2021.
Film Submission
1) Applicants must first register the film on the festival website, www.portal.icff.ir, and then send an MP4 previewing link with English subtitles to the secretariat along with the director’s photo, biography, filmography, film poster, brochure and at least 3 film stills.
2) Selected Iranian films must be provided with English subtitles.
3) The registration will be open from July 23rd and the deadline for registering and presenting films (both Iranian and foreign) is August 22nd, 2023.
4) The deadline for submitting the original version of the selected film is September 21st, 2023. If the final version is not presented on the scheduled date, the festival secretariat reserves the right to withdraw the film from all the announced programs.
5) The festival secretariat is responsible for scheduling the screening of selected films.
6) By submitting the film to the festival the applicant agrees to all the rules and regulations of the film screening in Iran.
7) Information is provided only through the public relations of the festival.
8) Taking the final decisions about unforeseen cases is at the sole and absolute discretion of the festival director.
9) In the event of discrepancy in the interpretation of these rules and regulations, the Persian version will apply.
Address of the Festival Secretariat:
Farabi Cinema Foundation /Building No. 3
No. 2454, Corner of Lankaran St., Vali-Asr Ave.
Postal code: 1434843631
Phone: 021-88194235, 021-88194248
E-mail: intl@icff.ir