Desert Dancer

Inspirational true story of Iranian dancer Afshin Ghaffarian, who risked his life for his dream to become a dancer despite a nationwide dancing ban.

On sera heureux

Saad is a young Moroccan illegal immigrant who, together with his Iranian boyfriend Reza, attempts the perilous journey to America. As soon as they arrive in Montreal, Saad is called upon to save his lover from certain deportation to Iran, where a likely death awaits him. In a desperate ploy, Saad manages to seduce a Canadian immigration official. This impromptu romance brings him close to the comfortable America he idealized on the beaches of Tangier and undermines his heroic mission.

Shall I Serve You?

A transparent look into the life of Iranian immigrants in America. Sholeh and her husband Nasser carry out their evening routine in a ritual they are both accustomed to but nonetheless deeply grateful for.

Pink Hill

Four friends spend a final summer together tangled in a web of sexual obsession, alienation and magic.

زندگی مشترک آقای محمودی و بانو

The renovation of a rambling family homestead becomes a metaphor for an unexpected assault on traditional family values when a newly married twenty-something brings her architect husband to draw up the plans for her aunt and uncle’s rehab job.

American Wrestler: The Wizard

In 1980, a teenage boy escapes the unrest in Iran only to face more hostility in America, due to the hostage crisis. Determined to fit in, he joins the school's floundering wrestling team.

روز روشن

THE BRIGHT DAY weaves a story that has its roots in the complexity of Iran’s draconian laws governing capital punishment. A kindergarten teacher hopes to aid the father of one of her young students, a man accused of manslaughter, by convincing each of seven reluctant witnesses to come forward. No one lacks a hidden agenda in this drama in which shades of truth collide with self-interest and the specter of payback. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

Sanam

In a small valley, riders pursue and kill a man. A horse thief, so his assassins claim. But for his ten year old son Issa, the disappearance of his father causes an avalanche of problems. With the family name stigmatized, Issa is bullied by the other children in the village. While his mother fights to clear her husbands name, Issa is left to his own devices. But unexpectedly, his solitude gives birth to his freedom, his real passion, horses.

Mr Ahmadi and a Simple Journey

Mr Ahmadi gets on an inter-city minibus for a relatively straightfoward trip. The mileu of arrivals and departures brings his journey new meaning.

مغول‌ها

A director of a television series on the history of cinema, who has been grappling with the screenplay of his first feature film, receives an assignment to oversee the installation of a television relay station in a remote region of Zahedan province. He has already hired Turkmen tribespeople for his film and selected his filming location. Meanwhile his wife, who is working on her Ph.D. dissertation about the Mongol invasion of Iran, attempts to dissuade him from accepting the assignment. One night, while working on his history of the cinema series, the director fantasizes a diegetic world that consists of clever juxtapositions of his different worlds: the history of cinema, the history of the mongol invasion, his own film idea and his imminent assignment to the desert.

Nudes in Limbo

The video is a series of short pieces of very buff nude people. The models don't speak, and the backgrounds are solid colors, with no decorations to let you know where the models are. So these nudes are, if not truly in limbo, certainly no place you can describe. In each short piece, the model is/models are performing some G-rated activity that shows off their body: a gymnast man works out on the hanging rings, two women hold in front of them a gauzy cloth that is being blown by an off-camera fan, a blonde runs a fluorescent tube down the length of her body, etc.

اینجا بدون من

The story is about the world of a small family with familiar dreams and not so remarkable problems. The mother is trying to lead everything to save her family, but small events disarrange all her plans.

مرگ یزدگرد

Bahram Beyzai's poetic imagining of the circumstances that led to the death of Yazdgerd III, the last of the Sassanid kings of Iran. His death in 651, during the Arab invasions that brought Islam to this Zoroastrian realm, was mysterious: his corpse was discovered in a mill, but the cause of his death—and the whereabouts of his remains—are unknown.

Cast Aside the Clouds

Fahrad Kosrovi is a Tehran bookstore owner whose daughter Utab attends a secret university aligned with the Iranian Bahá’í spiritualist faith. After the bookstore is attacked, a hospitalized Utab meets a young Muslim neurologist, Dr. Sasan Naderi and they fall for one another. With a romance between a Muslim and a member of the Bahá’í faith opposed by both families, their relationship is also tested when Utab learns Sasan has plans to go to Germany and she is arrested, imprisoned and tortured for being a Baha’i. With Utab facing execution, both families must do all they can to secure her release, before it’s too late.

Det nya landet

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.

نسرين

Nasrin; a wild rose, purged of its share of dry branches tries to flourish in Iran.

داش‌آکل

Dash Akol is greatly respected in Shiraz as an honorable man who has lost his family's money through helping his friends. He has an enemy, however, named Kaka Rostam, a mean and spiteful person. Dash Akol, who is in his forties, falls in love with Marjan, daughter of the late Haji Samad, for whose estate he is the executor. But he keeps his love secret. One day a suitor asks for Marjan's hand, and Dash Akol considers it against his code of honor to refuse. On the night of the wedding, Dash Akol hands over responsibility for the family to the bridegroom. As he is leaving the house, however, Kaka Rostam is waiting for him and a fight ensues. Kaka Rostam stabs him in the back, but Dash Akol succeeds in killing him. On his deathbed, Dash Akol sends his parrot to Marjan with the confession of love he has taught it.

گوزنها

Wounded by the police, a thief looks up his old friend in order to leave the proceeds of his theft with him. Instead, he finds that his friend is a drug addict. He sticks around to try and help his friend kick the habit; instead, both men are caught in a shootout with the police and...

Nous, femmes iraniennes

قصه ها

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.