Social & External
Unknown Role
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.
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.
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.
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.
A hacker group empty a bank account of a big strong person. The story goes on and now they must pay for that.
A haughty acclaimed newly married fashion designer named Iraj is shown the door by his boss after the boss's son arrives at Iran to take over his father's company. Iraj reluctant to promulgate the loss of his job, starts using his savings, trying to conceal the truth from his naive wife. Having squandered all the money he had on trivial matters, he tells his wife about being axed & that's when the tables turn on him.
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.
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?
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.
Nahal is around thirty and in her fourth month of pregnancy. During a routine check-up she learns that her baby has died and she now faces a curettage abortion in two days’ time. When she tries to address the subject, neither her mother nor her husband give her a chance to speak.
A sharp-edged look at people who live outside the constraints of Islamic law.
Sahar, an Iranian girl who has recently broken up with her fiancé, has decided to spend some time by herself in Antalya, Turkey. Leaving a club late at night, assuming that she is rich, she gets kidnapped and held in a remote basement. The kidnappers go greedy on the ransom, but little they know is that the whole setup has been a misunderstanding from both parties in the first place.
In modern day Iran, a female attorney fights for the custody of her seven year old diabetic son following a divorce from her husband. When the courts rule against her, she takes desperate actions that lead to tragic events.
A young man named Shamsadin (Mehdi Moradi) receives the title of Hafez, bestowed only on those who memorize the Koran, and is sent to teach it to Nabat (Aso), the overseas-raised daughter of a religious leader. Although they never see each other's faces, feelings of love grow between them as they read the holy book. Unable to contain his feelings for Nabat, Hafez breaks his vows as a holy man by composing a poem to her, and is thrown out of her father's house and forced to relinquish his title. Then Nabat is forced to marry another man. Will the two ever be able to meet again?
A sensation when released in 1999 in Iran, Two Women charts the lives of two promising architecture students over the course of the first turbulent years of the Islamic Republic. Tahimine Milani creates this scathing portrait of those traditions - aided by official indifference - which conspire to trap women and stop them from realizing their full potential; the inclusion of frank depictions of domestic violence was hailed by many as a breakthrough in dealing with a long taboo subject.
Reza is a freelance journalist who accidentally finds clues from Hiwa, an Iraqi soldier who saved Reza years ago in the harsh conditions of war. He leaves for Iraq to answer the issues he has been hiding from those around him for years.
Elevator (Persian: آسانسور) is a 1995 social drama Iranian film, written and directed by Hossein Shahabi (Persian: حسین شهابی)
Rain Tree (Persian: درخت بارانی) is a 2001 Iranian drama film Written and directed by Hossein Shahabi.
At the end of September 1941, Soviet artillery troops in besieged Leningrad realize that pretty soon they will fire their last shot, and after that the defense of the city will be doomed. The film is based on a true event: a small group of fearless soldiers transported a large supply of gunpowder through enemy lines to Leningrad.
A documentary film depicting five intimate portraits of migrants who fled their country of origin to seek refuge in France and find a space of freedom where they can fully experience their sexuality and their sexual identity: Giovanna, woman transgender of Colombian origin, Roman, Russian transgender man, Cate, Ugandan lesbian mother, Yi Chen, young Chinese gay man…
Pili, a 51-year-old widow, unexpectedly leaves her home when, on her way, she is interrupted by the presence of an alien. After trying to tell her children about the extraterrestrial encounter and being ignored by them, she must investigate how to deal with this being. Meanwhile, she grapples with new desires to abandon the traditional life she has always known. In the end, she will have to confront and accept her deepest fears in order to fight this alien.
While his father lies sick in a hospital room, Albert and his family try to get on with their lives. Their world seems suddenly divided in two: what happens inside the hospital, and the universe outside.
Joy is a journey through the mind of a 65-year-old autistic lesbian who's addicted to sugar and can't stop thinking about her ex-girlfriend from youth. She lives with her partner—a mannequin that she's built to look like her ex. The tragicomic piece delves deep into moments of intimacy, loneliness, sexuality, joy, and the desperate longing to be loved.
He is a writer and Ángela, a mature woman, is his domestic employee. Since he can't find inspiration, he decides to accompany her on her work day to other houses. Thus, delving into other people's lives, both begin to stop seeing each other as strangers and have fun, momentarily forgetting their own problems for a while. Without romantic tensions, the two simply enjoy sharing the day and, while Ángela cannot stop remembering Pedro, her dead husband, he only listens. Without advice or sermons, their two visions come together to make, at least that day, a different experience.
A woman wakes up to discover herself in a hospital room. She wanders the corridors before making a shocking discovery.
16-year-old girls Alma and Bea had managed to lure the middle-aged football coach Carl into a changing room at the football club. They got him where they wanted. He wanted to see them naked. They wanted to see him suffer. They shouldn’t have done that, or should they?
A historical revolutionary film depicting the struggle of peasants and the Baku proletariat against landowners and Musavatists in 1919.
Convicts on a chain gang sniff formaldehyde fumes to get high. They attempt a prison break and are shot down by the guards. After being buried, they rise from the dead, killing all in their path with shovels and hoes.
Part of Matt Mitler and Robert Prichard's Surf Reality Movie of the Month series, this featurette follows marriage-hungry Sarah as she's helped by a magic homeless man to find her true calling. Maybe.
Youssef Soltane, a 45-year-old Tunisian intellectual, is the product of a generation that lived the era of euphoria and great ideologies in the sixties, and their subsequent failure. He was incarcerated and tortured for his political opinions. Furthermore, his relationship with Zineb, a young, beautiful bourgeois, only brings him more trouble. During one long winter night, Youssef wanders in search of an emotional haven, prey to all the questions that flood his memory.
In every corner of our vast country there are talented people worthy of recognition and glory. They flock to the capital and take part in popular television shows. But the spotlights go out, and life goes on. And not as they saw it ... Each of the heroes - young and adults, ambitious and modest, lonely and in love - will have to go through many trials. They are waiting for ups and downs, meetings and partings, friendship and betrayal. But in the end they will become one big team, a family that unites different people from the most remote towns of our big country, in the name of music, talent and, of course, love!
Reihaneh experiences a horrible nightmare. The next day, the nightmare happens - her teacher disappears.
Follow two ever-changing creatures as they flow from one life-form to another on a vivid journey of sound and light. Sonaria's visual language is simple and abstract, designed to suggest, while the sonic language is layered and immersive, designed to answer.
the boys (and Georgina) take on the Emirates stadium in an epic afternoon of parkour! Corruption 4 eva!!!
The movie arose out of our sparetime as teenagers with fresh driver’s licenses and cobbled-together camera gear, wandering around a tired and honestly pretty grim post-industrial mill community, reinforced with after-hours access to the darkroom at the Sun Journal (where Aaron’s dad was the visuals editor), and some half-formed education in the techniques of Robert Frank, Frederick Wiseman, Dogme 95, Italian neorealism, pre-Obama Shepard Fairey, plus whatever culture pushed its way through the creaky pipes of low-bandwidth dial-up internet, or was smuggled up the actual superhighway of I-95 from Boston and eventually New York, or mailed first class via United States Postal Service from a burgeoning Netflix in those classic matte red envelopes, as valuable and rare as cash sent from China. [...] Somehow we negotiated access to a Canon XL1 3-CCD MiniDV camera and shotgun mic from the local public access station, in exchange for taping the high school graduation we didn’t participate in.
The dashing mountaineer Zaur (B. Bestaev) kills a Russian "imperialist" thereby becoming an abrek, member of a roving band of outlaws.