Iran to honor anti-coup Chilean filmmaker, Miguel Ernesto Littin Cucumides in Tehran

A portrait of Chilean film director, screenwriter and film producer Miguel Ernesto Littin Cucumides

A ceremony is scheduled to be held in the Iranian capital city of Tehran to honor Chilean film director, screenwriter and film producer, Miguel Ernesto Littin Cucumides.

According to a report published by the Secretariat of the International Section of the Ammar International Popular Film Festival (APFF), the 74-year-old cinematic figure will be paid tribute during a cultural event at Ibn Sina (Avicenna) Hall of Tehran University’s Faculty of Medicine in his own presence on Tuesday afternoon.

Littin’s latest film, dubbed Allende en su Laberinto (Allende is his Maze), will go on screen for the first time at the ceremony.

Littin attended the third edition of the APFF in Tehran earlier this month.

Allende en su Laberinto, which was produced in 2014, accounts the last seven hours of the life of former democratically-elected Chilean President Salvador Allende and his close allies inside the Palace of La Moneda during a brutal military coup d’etat on September 11, 1973.

Allende died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds during the putsch, which was led by then-army commander-in-chief Augusto Pinochet and aided by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Littin is globally renowned as one of the most prominent personalities of the New Latin American cinema.

He has directed at least 16 feature-length movies as well as documentaries, which have vied at the Cannes Film Festival, the New York Film Festival and the Moscow International Film Festival.

Littin was driven into exile shortly after Pinochet assumed power in Chile. He took refuge in Mexico, Nicaragua and Spain later on, before eventually returning to Chile following the resignation of Pinochet’s dictatorial regime.

The third edition of the APFF kicked off on August 24 and wrapped up on August 26, 2016.

More than 5,000 films from 129 countries were reportedly submitted to the secretariat of the festival.

The theme of this year’s edition was the Influence of Arrogant World Powers on Other Countries. The festival sought to shed light on the CIA-assisted colonial coup in Iran, which overthrew the then government of democratically-elected then-Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in favor of cementing the monarchical rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the then-Iranian monarch, back on August 19, 1953.