The play also brought Dashti the best director award and Asghar Piran the award for best actor during the closing ceremony of the event held at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall on Saturday.

The story of the play is set during a theater festival in Saint Petersburg, where a director plans to stage an open-air performance of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “White Nights” based on an agreement with the festival’s president. However, he fails to stage the play due to financial problems. During his sojourn in the Russian city, he engages in a dialogue with Mikhail Gorbachev in a meeting with the seventh and last leader of the Soviet Union.

Most of the main awards in other categories of the international section of the festival were also presented to Iranian productions.

Fatemeh Motamed-Arya from Iran was named best actress for her role in “The Cool End of the Memory” by Hamidreza Azarang.

Narges Hashempur’s play “Wolf Pups” was picked as best play and Ali Shams received the best playwright award for his work “When the Rooster Sings Wrong”.

The award for best set design went to “Flight Instructions for the Captain and Cabin Crew” by Farhad Fozuni.

In the national competition, “The Process” by Ali Korsizar was selected as the best play. It also won for Korsizar and Amir Ebrahimzadeh the best playwright award.

Mehrdad Mostafavi was named the best director for his play “Elephant in the Dark” in this section.

Moreover, four Iranian theater elites were honored during the closing ceremony of the festival.

Actors Hushang Tavakkoli, Reza Babak and Roya Teimurian, and playwright Mohammad-Amir Yarahmadi received awards for their lifetime achievements.

Source: Tehran Times