Tehran International Short Film Festival to become an Oscar-qualifying festival

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be registering the Tehran International Short Film Festival as an event whose award-winning films can qualify a movie for the Oscars. The announcement was made by the Iranian Youth Cinema Society (IYCS), which is the main organizer of the festival.

The Tehran Times newspaper quoted the festival director Sadeq Musavi as saying, “We were informed that the festival will be a gate to the Oscars late last week. Meanwhile, there are few festivals in Asia having this honour, for example, Egypt in North Africa and Japan, South Korea, Singapore and India are the sole countries having Oscar-qualifying festivals.” 

He added, “At present, there are over 10,000 festivals being organized across the world, most of them are unreliable. Meanwhile, the Tehran short festival has a good status in the world, although the festival is not decidedly familiar, it can be considered as the most important short film festival in West Asia.”

According to him, there are a total of 127 short film festivals in the world whose awards enable a film to qualify for the Oscars.