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Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, best known in Turkey and around the world for his “No One Knows About Persian Cats,” will be a guest of this month’s SineMardin International Film Festival, the organizers of the festival announced Wednesday.  

SineMardin will be marking its sixth edition from June 24-30 in this southeast Anatolian border city. The main theme of this year’s festival will be “authority.” Helün Fırat, the head of the Mardin Film Office, said in a written statement issued on Wednesday that this year’s festival would introduce numerous firsts, including a program called Children’s Films on Wheels, a screening program that will travel the districts of the Mardin province; and a screening of award-winning titles in the Iraqi city of Arbil that will run concurrently with the main program in Mardin. Another significant innovation in this year’s lineup will be a collaboration on short films with the Ankara-based Second Hand Short Film Festival, which will open its entire catalog of short films to SineMardin.

The 42-year-old Ghobadi will present four of his films as part of the 6th SineMardin, including his moving fictional drama “No One Knows about Persian Cats,” which won a special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. The film is a fictional account of Iran’s real-life underground music scene, told through the story of two young musicians as they form a band and prepare to leave the country.

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