Iranian director Jamil Rostami, whose Iranian-Iraqi Requiem of Snow recently became Iraq's first film to be submitted for a best foreign-language film Academy Award, has withdrawn his coming-of-age drama from the Danish capital's Buster-Copenhagen International Film Festival for Children and Youth as a protest against the publication of cartoons portraying Islam's prophet Mohammed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
"I planned to participate in the festival in Copenhagen," Rostami was quoted as saying. "But since that country's press has insulted the sanctity of the Prophet, I will boycott it."
In December 2005, Requiem of Snow, about a young woman dreaming of escaping from an undesirable marriage in a land parched by drought, won the best director award at the 8th Olympia International Film Festival for Children and Young People in Greece. It also received a good review in Variety.
Here's hoping that Rostami (and/or the powers that be in the Iranian government) will soon realize that the presentation of a good, eye-opening film at the Buster-Copenhagen festival will do Islam — and Denmark, and the world — much more good than a misguided cultural boycott.