TEHRAN -- The Turquoise 
Symbol for Best Film is the top award in the national competition at Iran’s International Documentary Film Festival “Cinema Vérité,” recognizing the producer or producers behind the festival’s selected film. 
Across the 17th, 18th and 19th editions, the honor went to four documentaries spanning radically different subjects: the struggle to preserve the endangered Asiatic cheetah, the impact of addiction on families, the difficult path of recovery and a young woman’s pursuit of education.
Taken together, the films offer a revealing look at the breadth of Iranian documentary filmmaking — and at the filmmakers’ recurring effort to turn larger social questions into intimate, character-driven stories.
At the 17th edition of Cinema Vérité, the Turquoise Symbol for Best Film went to Born in Captivity, directed and produced by Mehdi Imani Shahmiri. The documentary follows Iran’s controversial and difficult efforts to reproduce the endangered Asiatic cheetah in captivity. 
The project initially focused on Koushki and Delbar at Tehran’s Pardisan Park, but failed to produce offspring. The cheetahs were subsequently moved to the Touran National Park in Semnan province, where the effort continued in a more natural setting.
The story eventually centered on Iran, a female cheetah that became pregnant and gave birth to three male cubs following a difficult delivery. The cubs gradually died, with the last surviving cub, Pirouz, becoming one of Iran’s most recognizable animals and a symbol of the country’s endangered Asiatic cheetah population. 
Iranian coverage of the documentary
 has focused particularly on Pirouz’s birth, short life and death. 
What begins as a conservation story consequently becomes something more intimate: a portrait of an effort marked by scientific ambition, hope and repeated loss.
At the 18th edition, the Turquoise Symbol for Best Film went to Mohammad Kart for producing two documentaries, Torgi, directed by Toufiq Heydari, and Elevator, directed by Javad Razzaghizadeh. 
Torgi draws on Heydari’s personal experience. The film follows a boy who sets out to find his estranged father, who left the family years earlier and became addicted to drugs. The reunion gradually develops into a reversal of the traditional parent-child relationship: the son becomes the person supporting his father.
Elevator, meanwhile, follows Mohammad Saberi, who spent 11 years homeless before beginning the process of rebuilding his life. After three years of sobriety, Saberi seeks a new direction, drawing on his previous career as an elevator installer while entering the world of acting.
The two films approach different aspects of addiction and social marginalization, but both are ultimately concerned with the possibility of change — whether through the rebuilding of a family relationship or the attempt to construct an entirely new life.
Torgi also received the audience award at the 18th festival, underlining the film’s broader reception among Cinema Vérité viewers. 
At the 19th edition, the Turquoise Symbol for Best Film was awarded to Mehdi Avazadeh, Hashem Masoudi and Mojtaba Ehsani, the producers of For My Daughter, directed by Avazadeh. 
The documentary follows Shokrieh, a girl from a Kurdish rural community in West Azerbaijan province, from the age of 11 to 20. Avazadeh said after receiving the award that production had taken eight years, with the filmmakers following Shokrieh over that period. 
At its center is Shokrieh’s struggle to continue her education. Through her experience, the documentary addresses wider questions surrounding girls’ access to schooling, women’s rights and the obstacles facing education in some rural communities.
Rather than approaching those issues only as abstract social questions, the film places them within the life of one young woman and the future she hopes to build.
On the surface, the four documentaries recognized across the three editions have little in common.
Born in Captivity is an environmental film about the survival of an endangered species. Torgi and Elevator deal with addiction, family, homelessness and recovery. For My Daughter turns to education and the prospects of a young woman growing up in a rural Kurdish community.
Their common ground is the way each film translates a larger issue into an individual story.
In Born in Captivity, the fate of a species is conveyed through the lives of individual cheetahs. In Torgi, addiction becomes a story about a father and son. Elevator follows one man’s attempt to reclaim his life after years of homelessness. And For My Daughter connects the broader question of girls’ education to the coming-of-age story of Shokrieh.
That diversity is significant. The Turquoise Symbol is not tied to a particular documentary subject or filmmaking approach. Instead, the films recognized across these three editions demonstrate the range of realities that Iranian documentary filmmakers have sought to capture — from environmental conservation and addiction to family, social mobility and education.
What connects them is an emphasis on finding a story inside the issue: a person, an animal, a family or a life through which a much larger reality can be understood.
The 19th edition of Cinema Vérité was held in Tehran from Dec. 10-17, 2025, with the festival organized by the Documentary & Experimental Film Center (DEFC). The 20th edition is scheduled for December 2026.