Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan cancels trip to Iran

TEHRAN,Feb.6 (MNA) -- Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan canceled his trip to Tehran allegedly due to his father’s illness, festival organizers reported on Sunday. Ceylan was supposed to arrive in Tehran to promote his international award-wining movie “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” at the Fajr International Film Festival, Iran’s most important film gala. The movie is an entry to the festival of festivals’ section of the 30th edition of the Fajr International Film Festival underway in Tehran. “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” shared the Grand Jury Prize of the 64th Cannes Film Festival with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s “The Kid with a Bike”. Ceylan’s film features an all-male cast led by Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel and Firat Tanis in the roles of a doctor, a public prosecutor, a police chief and a murder suspect searching for a missing body in the vast steppes near a central Anatolian town. Ceylan’s “The Three Monkeys” bagged the best director prize at the Cannes 2008. His 2006 film “Climates” also won the FIPRESCI Movie Critics’ Award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. In July 2009, Ceylan was awarded a grand medal by the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe.