TEHRAN – Slovenian filmmaker Hanna Slak is currently in Tehran to promote her latest movie “The Miner” (“Rudar”) at the 36th Fajr International Film Festival.

The film, which was Slovenia’s submission to the 90th Academy Awards in the best foreign-language film category, has had its Asian premiere at the Fajr festival.

“The Miner” is based on a true story of an immigrant miner in Slovenia, who in a sealed mine, deep underground, finds thousands of bodies of people thrown into a pit after WWII. It was screened in the Cinema Salvation, the official competition section of the festival.

In an exclusive interview with the Tehran Times on Wednesday, Slak said that she feels greatly honored to have been invited to the Fajr Festival.

“I think this festival has a very broad understanding of films and shows many good and interesting films from around the world, so it is an honor to be part of this festival,” she said.

“The Miner” was previously screened at the 33rd Warsaw Film Festival where it received two awards, one of which was a special mention by the Ecumenical Jury.

“It was an honor to receive this award. The Ecumenical Jury is composed of representatives of different religions that award a film which usually stands for human values. This means that the film can speak to anyone from any religion and always supports very basic human values,” she explained.

“I think in an Islamic country it might be interesting to know that the main hero of the film comes from a Muslim background,” she said.

“He starts fighting for the rights of these people and any relatives they may have. But in this fight, he is left alone. He is also threatened with the loss of his job and that his family would lose their papers. But it is deeply important for him to preserve his own dignity and the dignity of his society,” she explained.

“This is a film about fighting for the truth. I am happy to see those are the values that we share in our cultures,” she noted.

Asked if she has any intention to show the suffering and the tragedy of people in Syria and Yemen, she replied, “At the moment I don’t have plans to do films about the refugee crisis in Europe, of course I am thinking about it and it deeply affects me each day.”

Slak also made remarks on the position of the Iranian cinema in the world.

“Iranian cinema is definitely very present in the world cinema. It has had a big influence on filmmakers in Europe and it is a brand,” she stated.

“I know Iranian cinema through the films that have been shown at the festivals in Europe like the ones by Abbas Kiarostami,” she added.

“I am mostly interested in female Iranian filmmakers,” she noted and added that she believes that the diversity of Iranian female directors is so vast and that she wants to be able to discover it.