TEHRAN – The Iranian short documentary “Throne of Wood” won an award at the 15th Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF), which ran from November 1 to 7 in Nigeria.
The 30-minute documentary, directed by Sadegh Kazemi and produced by Mohammad Javad Amirani, received the Best Documentary Short at the closing ceremony.
It is about Granny, the only one-hundred-year-old woman in a village, who has spent years piling up heaps of firewood in front of her house. Since the village has long been connected to natural gas, her neighbors mock her and consider her efforts pointless.
Known since her youth as “the Chief” for her independent and controlling nature, Granny has now reached a hundred and refuses to end up like the other elderly women of the village—dependent on her children.
Despite having more than fifty grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she now lives alone, and the most important task of her solitary years has become gathering massive stacks of wood and making her daily fire-brewed tea with them. After a fire breaks out in the house next door, the villagers pressure her to remove her woodpile for the safety of the neighborhood. But Granny is deeply attached to her wood—and giving it up is not an option.
This year’s edition of AFRIFF was held under the theme “Frames of the Future: Africa’s…
