Special Line

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.

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.

Forough is a middle aged woman whose husband has temporarily married with another woman. Even though that was kept secret from her, but his action is considered legal in Iran. Now the husband is in prison, due to not being able to pay second wife’s “Mehrieh” (the bride’s marriage portion).The second wife intends to receive her Mehrieh by asking the court’s permission to sell his house. Forough, the first wife, in order to not lose her home, intends to sell all she has to pay for her husband’s debt and release him from the jail.

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?

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.

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.

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.

A film written and directed by Siavash

Three years after his marriage, Bahram decides to take her wife to honeymoon.

The story of a professional photographer Hamed Aban and the radical change in his life. The teacher of his son gives him a book about nature and the cleaning of it. This changes him radically. He goes and hires himself in the municipality, wearing the orange suit like them and cleaning the streets, collecting garbage. Meanwhile his wife who is in Europe back home and is very angry with him. She insists on him to get back to his former work but he refusing. Then she wants a divorce and to take the son with herself to Europe.

When an ex-lover pours acid on a clergyman and his fiancé, the clergyman and his brother-in-law kill the man in an incident.

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.

The father of other

The story of two youngsters who one night meet a woman Khatoon who has take refuge in a billiard club. This put them on many challenges.

Kurdish-Iranian poet Sahel has just been released from a thirty-year prison sentence in Iran. Now the one thing keeping him going is the thought of finding his wife, who thinks he's been dead for over twenty years.

The story of life of an Iranian army leader who has faults in his life and now in purgatory wants to retaliate for his faults.

A young man steals a smuggler's goods and tries to sell them in a trip with his beloved to the border.

A young couple try to fix their marriage troubles with the help of a psychiatrist.

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.

In the tenth year of marriage, Babak and Manizheh face the biggest challenge of their life. Financial problems and difficult social situation cause Babak to work very hard and this leads to a deep gap between him and his wife, in a way that Manizheh starts a new relation, the relation which leads her to addiction and immorality. On the verge of her complete collapse, she wakes up to the truth that she has lost her life.