Finnish film-maker boycotts NY festival Aki Kaurismaki is protesting against the denial of a visa to Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami

Aseem Chhabra

On September 30, three days after it opened, the 40th New York Film Festival got embroiled in a major controversy. But the issue relates not so much to cinema as to America's war on terror.

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, considered the finest of the current generation of film-makers in the Islamic country, was denied an American visa to attend the film festival. And in protest another award-wining film-maker, Finland's Aki Kaurismaki, announced that he too would not attend the festival.

Kiarostami's new film Ten was shown at the festival on September 29 and again on October 1. Kiarostami had also planned to visit Harvard and the Ohio State University.

Kaurismaki's new film, The Man Without a Past, winner of the best actress award and the grand jury award at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, is scheduled to be screened on October 2 and 3.

Reports quoted Richard Pena, programme director of the Film Society of the Lincoln Centre, as saying: "It's very, very tough for an Iranian male to get a visa. We had him before. He's been to the US quite a few times, and it seems that each year the requirements become more obtuse and difficult. After September 11, they became that much stricter."

Kiarostami applied for a visa at the US embassy in Paris a month ago. He later learnt that his application had been turned down.

Kiarostami's other films include the trilogy, Where Is the Friend's Home?, And Life Goes On..., and Through the Olive Trees, and Taste of Cherry, the top winner at Cannes 1997. The New York festival has featured three of his films in the past and he was the subject of a 1996 retrospective at the Lincoln Centre.

Ten is shot entirely in a car. Over a period of time a woman drives several other women in her car through the streets of Tehran. Slowly the director reveals a little bit about each of the passengers and in turn about the life of women in present-day Iran.

The NYFF has shown five of Aki Kaurismaki's films in the past. The director, known for his droll sense of humour, has a huge cult following in the US and in the international film festival circuits.

The Man Without a Past was shown last month at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. The film deals with a man who, having lost his memory, sets out to find his real self. In the process he meets several people --- mostly living on the brink of poverty --- and a female Salvation Army soldier with whom he develops a love relationship.

Kaurismaki's statement, released on September 30 by the film festival, expressed his anguish at the current US policies and alluded to the Bush administration's expressed desire to conduct a war against Iraq.

"Not with anger (which never brought anything good), but with deep sorrow, I received the news that Abbas Kiarostami, a friend of mine and one of the world's most peace-loving persons, is prevented from participating in the New York Film Festival, because being a citizen of Iran he was refused a visa," the statement said.

"Under the circumstances I too am forced to cancel my participation --- for if the present Government of the United States of America does not want an Iranian, they will hardly have any use for a Finn either. We do not have the oil.

"However, what concerns me more is that if Abbas Kiarostami is being treated like this, what will happen to nameless persons? I consider the Geneva Convention as the last hope of mankind and as a private citizen of Finland, I accuse the Government of the United States of violating it."

And then, in what is the high point of Kaurismaki's ironic sense of humour, he says: "Meanwhile, I would like to invite the present US Secretary of Defense to visit Finland. We could take a walk in the woods and pick mushrooms. That might calm him down."

The mushroom-picking reference alludes to a tender scene in The Man Without a Past. As love blossoms between the film's protagonist and Irma, the Salvation Army soldier, the two take a walk in the woods and pick mushrooms.

External Links:
A portrait of Abbas Kiarostami

The works of Aki Kaurismaki