The 83rd Venice Film Festival wrapped up on the evening of Saturday, September 21, and Laleh Marzban, an actress in the film “Guard,” won the Best Actress award in the Horizons (Orizzonti) section.

In this film, Marzban plays the role of a young girl who, with the intention of becoming a model, wants to travel to Turkey, but her traditional father, who is a prison guard, locks her and the other members of her family in the home so that she will not take that trip.

The film has an allegorical atmosphere in which the house on the verge of ruin, controlled by a prison guard, openly becomes a symbol of Iran.

With tears in her eyes, and addressing the people of Iran who “live under the harshest pressures,” Marzban dedicated her award to Iranian women who have paid a heavy price for even small freedoms, and “today, more than at any time before, continue pursuing their dreams with determination, courage, and hope, and I’m certain that one day our dreams will become reality.”

At the end, she also said a few sentences in Persian: “I want to say something: I know we are experiencing the hardest days of our lives, but we should not lose hope.” https:/