A spotlight was placed on acclaimed actress Fatemeh Motamed-Aria, who attended the festival to present screenings of five of her films, including new restorations of her collaborations with filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Once Upon a Time, Cinema (1992) and The Actor (1993), along with Avalanche (2015), The Blue Veiled (2019), and Once Upon a Time, Abadan (2021), screening in its U.S. premiere. The festival featured the world premiere of Hamid Nematollah’s The Killer and the Savage, a thriller banned for more than five years; the New York premieres of My Favorite Cake, which debuted in competition at the Berlinale, and Junks & Dolls; and In the Arms of the Tree and Universal Language and Canada’s official submissions for the Academy Awards.
