Verdict

A Tehran mullah-in-training struggles to take care of his ailing wife and their children in this profoundly moving melodrama. A film of near-universal appeal, it puts a human face on Iran's Muslim clergy with its unusual tale of a man forced by hardship to become a better husband and father. Seyed Reza has just moved with his family to Tehran so he can study the Koran, and he relies on his lovely wife Zahra to look after their two young children and weave the intricate rugs that earn them a living. But one evening Zahra collapses and is taken to the hospital, where she's diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Scarcely able to process the tragedy, Seyed is left to cook, change diapers, walk his daughter to school and take his toddler son with him to his classes, where peers and elders treat him with scorn. But Seyed eventually learns to cope, his prayers and devotional studies taking on deeper meaning as he attends to the hard nightly work of rug weaving, getting through with a heavy ...

In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

Two homicide detectives investigates the murder of a woman ...

Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.

A 15-year-old Somalian boy meets a 40-year-old Iranian man in a refugee camp in Skåne, in the south of Sweden. With the threat of deportation hanging over them, they decide to take their faiths in their own hands and together they go on a journey in the Swedish summer.

Spanning 18 years in an Iranian women's prison, this follows two women: the new prison warden, a tough as nails devout Muslim who has served in the army on the Iraqi front, and a young midwife, Mitra, who is serving her sentence for killing her mother's abusive husband. In the early years, Mitra is repeatedly punished as the warden tries to break her. This includes punishment for delivering a baby in the prison cell while all of the prison staff has taken shelter during an Iraqi bombing. The warden's attitude starts to change after 8 years, when Mitra tries to protect a new inmate from rape at the hands of her older cellmates. When the baby comes back in 1991 as a 17 year old delinquent, Sepideh, the warden respects Mitra enough to protect the girl.

Olfat is raising her children in hardship. She has one daughter and one son called Yonos who works in Kerman copper mine. One day, she finds a note at home with this massage "My friends and I are going to enter the war as soldiers". After reading this note, Olfat and his friend's parents got worried about their sons. When operation Valfajr failed, they received news about Yonos's friend. Olfat is waiting for her son too. As she finds out that the Iraqi radio announces the Iranian captives' names, she ties a radio on her back and carries it everywhere.

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.

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 married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.

Bahman, Mahtab, Ramin and Donya Mehdipour are enjoying a perfect summer in a small Finnish town. Their routines are fractured by a negative decision on their application for asylum by the Finnish Immigration Service. But life must go on and the 13-year-old Ramin is about to enter an entirely new school, junior high. The Mehdipours use their last chance to appeal but continue their everyday lives, fuelled by their exceptionally positive outlook and attitude.

Princess of Rome, Mellika, granddaughter of Great Caesar. The story talks about her move from Byzantium in the 9th century, to avoid her marriage with Krytos, and brings her to Baghdad to become the mother of Imam Mahdi, the Savior.

A beautiful girl named Afsaneh who is living in Downtown has economic problems and her family offers to marry her to their landlord whose wife had pass away. At a night she went to a clergyman and...

Hamid and Mahin are husband and wife and are traveling to the north by their car. But in the way they have an accident with a rural woman. Unlike his wife's disagreement Hamid decides to escape the scene and lives the woman to die but it is only the beginning of his troubles.

Naghshe Negar

Ata and Masoumeh are living in a rented house. Their lease time is over and they can not pay the rent added. But they like to stay and live in this house...

The Little Black Fish

The depressed Shirin wanders around at her father's funeral. Unexpectedly, she sees a man very much like her father. Regardless of her uncle's objection, Shirin is enchanted by the idea of finding out that man. Reluctantly, her uncle acknowledges that the man is her father's illegitimate child. Looking at gloomy daughter, Shirin's mother tells her about some past events, especially about an unexpected truth that Shirin is her father's adopted daughter. It seems to be clear that Shirin and that man have no blood bond. But her father's mistress tells a different story.

Bita (Hatami), a successful lawyer specializing in championing the cause of women’s rights in divorce cases, is blind to the trouble brewing in her own marriage. A snatch of gossip and a problem client with an unwanted pregnancy unexpectedly bring Bita’s problems home. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

An arrogant movie star's life drastically changes when a teenage girl shows up.