TESTIMONIALS. "In times of war, we can’t create anything and we forget who we are" : meeting with Iranian artists who came to participate in the 50th Annecy festival

The three friends sit on the terrace after traveling through Paris. Aghil Hosseinian, cap and floral blouse, lights a cigarette. “I can’t believe I’m here”he confides with a relieved laugh. There was a visa problem and the Annecy festival had to intervene with the French embassy to bring them over. In addition, flights from Tehran are rare and expensive, adds his partner, Pooya Afzali. “We put all our savings into the tickets, 900 euros each. With the war, the price of tickets tripled in one year”he explains.

Pooya Afzali won a prize at Annecy in 2025, with At Night, a complicated edition for him with the start of the Twelve Day War between Iran and Israel, and his father who told him of his cancer. From these shocks he created Chancethe short film he is presenting this year. “It speaks to the central role of chance in diseases or in wars, especially in Iranpresents the director. I think that chance writes history much more than all the technologies and knowledge that we have developed.” It may not be the best, but we created with almost nothing, explains Pooya.

Aghil Hosseinian confirms that the situation is very complicated: “In Iran, we talked about the bombings, but what we don’t see on television is that it is now impossible to plan anything for the population.”

“Before the war we had a large animation studio, with 15 people. But today, we can no longer pay the salaries or the rent. There are only two of us left working in a studio four times smaller. It was very sad.”

Aghil Hosseinian, Iranian director

à franceinfo

As for the peace agreement signed between Iran and the United States, Aghil Hosseinian does not know what to think of it: “Neither good nor bad, it doesn’t matter to mehe said, because it doesn’t depend on us. Hopefully when we return to Iran, we will be able to launch projects and earn money again.”

Until then, during the trip, he wants to try to forget what is happening in his country. Next to him, Sogol Sanagoo, pink hair, shows the series credits that they both created, frame by frame, in modeling clay. According to her, they are not going to win, the competitors “are too strong”. But if they go to Annecy, it’s for something else. “Art is part of our personalities. But in times of war, we can’t create anything, and with Aghil, we forget who we really are. So in Annecy, we really hope to meet other directors, like us and be ourselves again, normal, just for a week”, she hopes. During this break, they also hope to meet producers who can finance them.