“Winter Train” takes Iranian director to Poland

 

Sinaii is being accompanied by an official of Iran’s Farabi Cinematic Foundation (FCF), which will be another producer of the film, some Persian news outlets announced on Sunday. 

 

No names were mentioned for the Polish side of the project. 

 

The plan to make “Winter Train” was announced in November 2010 after Polish Cultural and Press Attaché Radoslaw Pytlak and FCF Director Ahmad Mir-Alaii signed an agreement to produce the film.

 

However, the plan was postponed afterwards due to a lack of funds.

 

In mid-October this year, Sinaii said that he would persevere in his efforts to convince the FCF to allow him to make “Winter Train”.

 

“I am still waiting for the preliminary work to be done, and I intend to be persistent with the film project,” he stated.

 

“I have not lost hope. I am in contact with the Polish side to approve the necessary budget for the film,” Sinaii added.

 

Pytlak had previously said that his country will do its best in the production of the film, which will focus on “an important human event.”

 

Sinaii was granted the Gloria Artis medal by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in May 2011.

 

In 2008, he received the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Poland for his “The Lost Requiem”, a documentary about the Polish wartime exodus from the Soviet labor camps of Siberia to Iran.

 

Sinaii also made “Malgorzata”, a telefilm about the story of the Polish exodus to Iran in 1942 during World War II.

 

World War II was devastating to Poland, as not only was the country’s Jewish population almost totally annihilated during the war, but also millions of non-Jewish Poles died as well. A great number of the population was forced to flee from their homeland to seek refuge in other countries around the world including Iran.

 

MMS/YAW

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