After five years studying in Paris, Arash has not adjusted to life there and has decided to return to Iran to live. Hoping to change his mind, his two friends Hossein and Ashkan convince him to take a last trip through France.
A playwright Iran tries to confront a creative crisis while political clashes erupt during her country's 2009 election.
Iran, January 16th, 1979. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi flees after being overthrown. Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Tehran and proclaims the Islamic Republic on April 1st, 1979. In the same year, Saddam Hussein seizes power in Iraq and, after several border skirmishes, attacks Iran on September 22nd, 1980, initiating a cruel war that will last eight years. Since its outbreak, correspondent Saeid Sadeghi documented it from its beginning to its bitter end.
Turkey's history has been shaped by two major political figures: Mustafa Kemal (1881-1934), known as Atatürk, the Father of the Turks, founder of the modern state, and the current president Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, who apparently wants Turkey to regain the political and military pre-eminence it had as an empire under the Ottoman dynasty.
The Freedom of the Sea is a short documentary highlighting the freedom of living in the UK - in contrast to a more restrictive life in Iran - through the joy of daily sea swimming in Brighton.
The creation of Iannis Xenakis’ « Persephassa » at the Shiraz-Persepolis Art Festival. There are only a few archives left of this piece, for its ring-like disposition around the audience made it difficult for people to record it or take pictures of it. When it was created in Persepolis, each percussionist was settled on the stump of a column of the Palace of Darius. The distance between them could go as far as 164 feet (50 metres).
In this guided tour of a unique Persian carpet, a close-up of the delicate "spine" of a tree branches out into the discovery of a fantastical world.
The Last Jews of Baghdad takes a historical and personal look at the persecution, torture, escape and exodus of over 160,000 Iraqi- Jews between the years 1940 through 2003. Hear from the survivors the real reasons why they left their beloved homeland of over 2500 years and if they will ever return.
China’s President Xi Jinping is a force to be reckoned with. As leader of the Communist colossus, he commands the world’s attention, but who is China’s strongman and what is his agenda?
Hoffnungsschimmer am Horn von Afrika
In 1972, Bahman Maghsoudlou made a short film about Iranian artist Ardeshir Mohasses. For 36 years, this remained the only film about this internationally acclaimed artist. In 2008, spurred by a New York retrospective of Mohasses's work and the artist's passing, Maghsoudlou finally began work on the extended film he knew its subject deserved. Thus was born, Ardeshir Mohasses: The Rebellious Artist.
After seven years in prison, a female student in Tehran is hanged for murder. She had acted in self-defence against a rapist. For a pardon, she would have had to retract her testimony. This moving film reopens the case.
Stunde Null auf dem Dach der Welt - Was kommt nach dem Dalai Lama?
Leyla and her six-year-old daughter Nila live in the holy city of Mashhad in Iran. Nila is the result of a temporary marriage, which allows a man to marry a woman even if he is already married. Children born from such a relationship are legally non-existent. As long as the father does not recognize the child, no birth certificate can be issued and Nila cannot attend school. The documentary depicts Leyla's tireless efforts to clarify Nila's legal status in order to offer her a perspective for her future. In a never-ending bureaucratic battle, Leyla fights not only against the legal system, but also against a judgmental society.
A documentary on how British double-dealing during the First World War ignited the conflict between Arab and Jew in the Middle East. The bitter struggle between Arab and Jew for control of the Holy Land has caused untold suffering in the Middle East for generations. It is often claimed that the crisis originated with Jewish emigration to Palestine and the foundation of the state of Israel. Yet the roots of the conflict are to be found much earlier – in British double-dealing during the First World War. This is a story of intrigue among rival empires; of misguided strategies; and of how conflicting promises to Arab and Jew created a legacy of bloodshed which determined the fate of the Middle East.
Deng Xiaoping's economic and political opening in China. Margaret Thatcher's extreme economic measures in the United Kingdom. Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in Iran. Pope John Paul II's visit to Poland. Saddam Hussein's rise to power in Iraq. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The nuclear accident at the Harrisburg power plant and the birth of ecological activism. The year 1979, the beginning of the future.
A "Chinese" father reflects on the changing relationship of China and US during his trip to Beijing to retrieve his 3-year-old "American" daughter who has been stranded because of the recent "decoupling" of the two countries. Born in China and living in the American Midwest, filmmaker Yinan Wang attempts to unpack his own experience of how a transnational migrant family deals with the distress caused by identity, nationalism, and geopolitics.
Case history of an Iranian patient bitten by a rabid wolf.
A courageous pastor uses his underground network to rescue and aid North Korean families as they risk their lives to embrace freedom.
When an Iranian-Canadian filmmaker hears the story of Master Ghadamyar- a Kurdish 120-year-old Tanbur player, he takes off on a mission to discover more about this spiritual master's musical and enchanting life. The film follows his journey to Western Iran, where he unearths the ancient traditions and teachings of Ghadamyar's faith known as Yarsanism, and its relationship to the mysterious Tanbur as a meditative instrument. The film takes audiences on a musical and visual quest among rugged landscapes of Western Iran to experience undiscovered voices and spiritual awakening. We witness the collective prayer of Yarsani Tanburists, as a practice to maintain their spiritual identity and search for inner beauty.