In 1986 Iran, Sahebjam, whose car breaks down in a remote village, enters into a conversation with Zahra, who relays to him the story about her niece, Soraya, whose arranged marriage to an abusive tyrant ended in tragedy.
A young toymaker tries to make sense of the impermanence of life that he has been forced to acknowledge through experiences of separation and death.
As Raman prepares to migrate out of Iran, his friends plot the perfect way to celebrate his impending departure. However, their path is plagued with conflict; an unresolved argument over the accidental death of a friend and a conservative elder brother who looks upon their lives with disdain, further resolves to stop the celebration.
After an Afghanistan-born woman who lives in Canada receives a letter from her suicidal sister, she takes a perilous journey through Afghanistan to try to find her.
Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.
This social Iranian drama, directed by Flora Sam, centers on an old man named Yousef who resides in Kashan. He lives with his daughter, Samira, and his young grandson, Amir Ali. The main conflict arises when Yousef faces the difficult situation of being forced to leave his home. Despite the pressure and the necessity of the move, Yousef is deeply attached to his current house and strongly resists the idea of leaving at all. The film explores the emotional turmoil and challenges faced by the old man and his family as they deal with this impending displacement.
A playwright Iran tries to confront a creative crisis while political clashes erupt during her country's 2009 election.
An Iranian journalist couple wants to move to America to escape the difficulties of their country. The woman receives her visa but her husband doesn't. He stays in Iran and watches his wife find success on television and falls into a state of depression.
You're waiting,aren't you?
Famed actress Susan Taslimi plays three roles here: Kian, who doubts her identity; Vida, the twin sister, a self-assured artist; and their mother, who gives up one child out of fear of poverty, then deprives the other of affection because she deeply regrets the child whom she has abandoned.
During a demonstration, with the assistance of a man named Manouchehr, Fereshteh succeeds to get rid of the security forces. After victory of the revolution, they accidentally meet each other and consequently get married despite disagreement of Fereshteh’s family. Coming back from the honeymoon, they are encountered with a new situation altering all the peoples’ lives. The men should go to the war front for defending their country after the invasion of Iraqi Army to Iran.
Award-winning Iranian filmmaker Rakshan Banietemad ends her eight-year hiatus from feature filmmaking with this ingenious, mosaic-like narrative, which knits together the stories of seven characters to create a microcosm of Iranian working-class society.
Grief is an inheritance. Perhaps the sorrow you feel today once belonged to a woman who, a thousand years ago, watched a mountain of books burn in the fire of an invasion.
Itinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Said falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes as his wife Halaleh, the clan's lone woman, a widow with a young son. Reeboir attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border; they're mules, always on the move. Said and Reeboir try to teach as their potential students keep walking. Danger is close; armed soldiers patrol the skies, the roads, and the border. Is there a role for a teacher? Is there hope?
The uneasy relationship between a mother and daughter is made all the more turbulent by drug abuse in this downbeat drama from Iranian filmmakers Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Mohsen Abdolvahab
Rouhi, a young bride-to-be, is hired as a maid for an affluent family in Tehran. Upon arriving, she is suddenly thrust into an explosive domestic conflict. The wife is convinced her husband is having an affair and enlists Rouhi as a spy, to follow her husband, and confirm her suspicions. What Rouhi discovers, however, threatens not only their marriage but her own future.
Youssef, a blind university professor, is suddenly diagnosed with a fatal disease and must undergo treatment in France. Back home, will he find the life he had before?
A political allegory on four middle-class guys who pile into their car for a ski weekend. A brief stop at a picturesque vista leads to their chance discovery of a prominent rock formation it seems would be oh so easy to tip over, but...
On a pilgrimage to Mashad from Tehran, a couple's transportation breaks down, far from any major town. The husband, a photographer, seeks help at a nearby village and encounters a teacher who offers to help. Whilst the husband and teacher go off to find a spare part, the wife, who used to be a teacher, takes over the teaching lessons in the village. It is clear that the children live there, in this strange deserted place, without any men, save the teacher and an old signal guard. As the day draws on, the children help to bring a new hope and life into the wife's heart.
Makhmalbaf puts an advertisement in the papers calling for an open casting for his next movie. However when hundreds of people show up, he decides to make a movie about the casting and the screen tests of the would-be actors.