Shahid by Narges Kalhor, the Iranian director who fled to Munich, will open the 33rd edition of the Barcelona International Women's Film Festival (MIFDB). It will be on May 22 at 8:00 p.m. at the Filmoteca de Catalunya. There will be a presentation and discussion with the director.

In Iran, the word Shahid means martyr. It is also one of the surnames the director inherited after the murder of her great-grandfather in 1907. Tired of the connotations of this word, Narges Kalhor documents the process of changing her last name. Kalhor's alter ego confronts spectral visits from her great-grandfather and German bureaucracy, turning this film into an absurd, modern heroine's journey.

Under the theme In the Company of Strangers, this year's program aims to confront the hostility of our present through stories that escape all narrative pacts and challenge the limits of the patriarchal imagination. Volume I of this 33rd edition will be in seven sections: Filmic Persistences, Sarah Maldoror Retrospective and Family Sessions at the Filmoteca de Catalunya, Cinema Out of Place in various squares of Barcelona, Special Sessions at Candy Darling, La Bonne, Zumzeig Cinecooperativa, Santa Mònica and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Educational Activities, and the MIFDB on Filmin.

More information here.