Born to be Gone

A father sacrifices an animal on the day of Eid al-Adha according to the traditions and customs of the past. According to the old custom, he gives the last bowl of water to the goat, but his son tries to save the goat. The father angrily looks for them. The boy makes the goat run away and puts the rope around his neck instead of the goat. This short film refers to the story of Ismail and Ibrahim in Islam.

The film is about the difficult situation in which the Pakistanis in particular and the Muslims in general are caught up since 9/11. There is a war going on between the Fundamentalists and the Liberal Muslims. This situation is creating a drift not only between the Western world and the Muslims, but also within the Muslims. The educated and modern Muslims are in a difficult situation because of their approach towards life and their western attire. They are criticized and harassed by the fundamentalists and on the other hand the Western world sees them as potential suspects of terrorism just because of their Muslim names.

Juan Méndez Bernal leaves his house on the 9th of april of 1936 to fight in the imminent Spanish Civil War. 83 years later, his body is still one of the Grass Dwellers. The only thing that he leaves from those years on the front is a collection of 28 letters in his own writing.

A young British officer resigns his post when he learns of his regiment's plan to ship out to the Sudan for the conflict with the Mahdi. His friends and fiancée send him four white feathers as symbols of what they view as his cowardice. To redeem his honor, he disguises himself as an Arab and secretly saves their lives.

The richest merchant in XIX century Sarajevo and his fellow travelers are captured by a group of bandits. In order to learn more about merchant’s riches, the bandits’ leader investigates the group and discovers that merchant’s wife, who cheated on merchant during one of his travels, later – in fear of his vengeance played to be possessed by “rage”. Looking for the cure, the merchant brings his wife to Ahmed Jusuf – former warrior and man of authority. Jusuf advised the merchant to take his wife and move into another region – having an idea on what was the story behind wife’s rage, bat also in an attempt to protect himself from the feelings that have already stifled.

A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the '50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.

In 1971 Salford fish-and-chip shop owner George Khan expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways. But his children, with an English mother and having been born and brought up in Britain, increasingly see themselves as British and start to reject their father's rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.

An American woman, trapped in Islamic Iran by her brutish husband, must find a way to escape with her daughter as well.

A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.

A member of an elite paramilitary counter-terrorism unit becomes traumatized after witnessing the suicide bombing of a young girl and is forced to undergo retraining. However, unbeknownst to him, he becomes a key player in a dispute between rival police divisions, as he finds himself increasingly involved with the sister of the girl he saw die.

A woman threatens to leave her husband unless he installs a toilet in their home. To win back her love and respect, he heads out on a journey to fight against the backward society.

Five years apart, they reunite as lovers, but when family-demands force Xiao Chen to marry, Lu Feng feels betrayed—and vows revenge.

Ahmet Nurudin is a dervish and head of the Islamic monastery of the Mevlevi order in Sarajevo. He is a personification of morale and dogmatic belief, everything that Muslim religion of the Ottoman rule rests on. Throughout his life, the atmosphere of the city, the relations with the judge and the mechanism of government, the image of Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century is being revealed. Based on a highly praised novel by Meša Selimović.

The infamous story of Benjamin Barker, a.k.a Sweeney Todd, who sets up a barber shop down in London which is the basis for a sinister partnership with his fellow tenant, Mrs. Lovett. Based on the hit Broadway musical.

A successful Indian scientist returns home to his village to take his nanny back to America with him, and in the process rediscovers his roots.

The story of August who loses his beloved sister Christina, a former porn star known as The Princess. He adopts Christina's five-year-old daughter Mia. Weighed down by grief and guilt, August breaks down and with Mia in tow, he embarks on a mission of vengeance to erase Christina's pornographic legacy.

A woman, married off to an abusive butcher, is overpowered by the twin forces of patriarchy and tradition in Taiwan during circa 1920 to 1945.

Born a lower-caste girl in rural India's patriarchal society, "married" at 11, repeatedly raped and brutalized, Phoolan Devi finds freedom only as an avenging warrior, the eponymous Bandit Queen. Devi becomes a kind a bloody Robin Hood; this extraordinary biographical film offers both a vivid portrait of a driven woman and a savage critique of the society that made her.

A disabled man takes on the system when his pension is tied up in a morass of red tape. His story is revealed on a television program, and the star of the show is admonished for trying to incite the public against the system. The media, the man and the television manager gather to try to talk out the misunderstandings they all experience with the system of slow-moving social injustices. The message of the film also states that the days of media scrutiny and public-opinion feedback are here to stay.

The first of four installments in the groundbreaking Heartbeat of the World anthology film series. Comprised of several short films by some of the world's most exciting directors, Words with Gods follows the theme of religion - specifically as it relates to an individual's relationship with his/her god or gods...or the lack thereof. In Words with Gods, each director recounts a narrative centered around human fragility, as well as environmental and cultural crises involving specific religions with which each has a personal relationship; including early Aboriginal Spirituality, Umbanda, Buddhism, the Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, and Atheism. An animated sequence by Mexican animator Maribel Martinez is woven through each of the film segments, with each segment narratively connected as a feature-length film.