The Kurdish-Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi is competing for his third Golden Shell with Rhino Season, the film he has shot in exile in Turkey with Monica Bellucci in the leading role.

The actress from Malena or Irreversible revealed that in Rhino Season, “I have fallen back on the drama that Mediterranean woman have in their genes from generations of suffering from machismo that we have inherited from our mothers and grandmothers.

”Expelled from Iran four years ago by the Islamic regime, he director said that he had made the film because he felt that not working was a kind of suicide. He explained that, “it has strengthened my spirit. It’s my attempt to rediscover life, and be myself again.”