Director waits for his visa to attend Vancouver film festival

Officials with the Vancouver International Film Festival are still waiting for a word from the immigration officials as to whether an Iranian filmmaker will be able to get a visitor’s visa to attend the film festival next week.

Officials with the Vancouver International Film Festival are still waiting for a word from the immigration officials as to whether an Iranian filmmaker will be able to get a visitor’s visa to attend the film festival next week.

Manijeh Hekmat’s film, 3 Women, which is about three generations of Iranian women, has been invited by the festival to attend the North America premiere of the movie. But till now her application has not been accepted. If, in case, her application gets rejected then she will be the fourth invited director unable to attend the festival this year.

Among the three directors not granted visa is Gao Wendong, whose film Sweet Food City got a special mention from the jury for the Dragons and Tigers Award for the emerging Asian filmmakers. The programmer of Dragons and Tigers, Tony Rayns told a packed theatre that Mr. Gao has been turned away by the Canadian government in what has become sort of a tradition.

This is the third consecutive year that at least one director has not been able to attend the Vancouver festival because they couldn’t get the visa. According to the festival officials, Mr. Gao’s visa was not processed due to lack of assets.

Yu Guangyi, an established Chinese director was also not granted visa because he wanted his family to accompany him to Vancouver.

Customs and Immigration Canada said that it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases, but added that all visitors must fulfill the requirements for temporary residence in Canada.

Department spokesman Karen Shadd wrote in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail that CIC understands the importance of such significant events taking place in Canada, and is committed to work pro-actively with the event organizers. He said that they also work very actively with their overseas visa offices in order to ensure that while evaluating the applications, due consideration is given to the support offered by the Canadian organizers of the event.

The festival’s director, Alan Franey, pointed out that some the filmmakers who were not granted visas to Canada have had no such problem in traveling to other film festivals.

Mr. Franey said that last year, it was such a persistent issue that there was a lot of frustration. He added that in order to ensure that this won’t happen again the festival officials have worked closely with the Canadian embassy in Beijing.