The secretariat of the third edition of the Nationwide Theater Festival of Heavenly General, held in commemoration of the Iranian anti-terror commander Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, announced the 11 final nominees of its playwriting competition section.

The nominees are Davoud Fat’hali-Beigi, Mehdi Akbari, Ali Mirza-Emadi, Ali-Hossein Afshari, Hossein Ahmadkhani, Gholamhossein Dolatabadi, Hamed Sehat, Leili Aaj, Kaveh Mahdavi, Asghar Garousi and Mohammad Saleh Karami, IRNA reported.  

The jury members are playwright and university professor Yousef Fakhraei, art and literature researcher, Sadeq Rashidi, and playwright Reza Gashtasb.

The other sections of the festival are street theater and Radio Theater. The event is being held by Revayat-e Fat’h Cultural Foundation and the general office for culture and Islamic guidance of the southeastern Iranian province of Kerman. Opened on Jan. 7, the festival will end on Jan. 11.

Lieutenant General Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), were martyred along with their companions in a U.S. drone strike authorized by former president Donald Trump near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.