Three Iranian films will be screened with age restrictions in cinemas both in Tehran and provincial cities. This has been happening to a number of films now and then during thepast few years, but only for a few of them. The films, namely Harim (the zone) directed by Reza Khatibi which was screened on Wednesday and "the postman would knock on the
door only for three times" by Hassan Fathi and "the hut" by Javad Afshar which are in the schedule for the silver screen later on the year, will be focusing on the age of the viewers when selling tickets.
These films, together with another one called "the shadow of horror" directed by Emad Assadi, were screened with the same age restriction during the last International Fajr Film Festival for having too violent or horrifying scenes. Prior to this, the Iranian cinema had experienced only a very few cases for which age restrictions was necessarily applied.
For example, youngsters below the age of 18 were banned from watching "the calamities of Shirin" by Alireza Dacoudnezhad while people below 16 were not recommended to see "Parkvey" directed by Fereydoun Jirani, for its belonging to the horror film genre. One thing to note here is that these limitations were never strictly applied to these films.
Applying age restrictions to viewers of certain films has been quite a recurring event in world cinema but the issue has been taken with certain misunderstandings in Iran which, by themselves, highlight the absence of proper notions regarding this issue. Davioudnezhad: The practice of setting up age restrictions for films is not a well-known phenomena in Iran
Commenting on the issue, Alireza Davoudnezhad who has already had one of his films "The Calamity of Shirin" gone for age restrictions says: "the Iranian cinema is enjoying diversity neither in themes nor in audience.
That is why there has never been that urgent need compelling officials to apply age restrictions for viewers. Most of our films have a limited marketing opportunity and number of the viewers is not that large, so, under such conditions, applying age restrictions did not seem that necessary.