Taste of Cherry
A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task because he needs the money, but his new associate soon tries to talk him out of committing suicide.
In the Land of Brothers
Three members of an extended Afghan family start their lives over in Iran as refugees, unaware they face a decades-long struggle ahead to be "at home".
Universal Language
Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-strange walking tour of Winnipeg historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother.
Where Is the Friend's House?
An 8-year-old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.
Holy Spider
A journalist descends into the dark underbelly of the Iranian holy city of Mashhad as she investigates the serial killings of sex workers by the so called "Spider Killer", who believes he is cleansing the streets of sinners.
Through the Olive Trees
When the actor in a scene for his film Life And Nothing More… has to quit, a film director casts another man for the part. However, complications arise since the man and the woman who was cast for the scene know each other.
The Great Yawn of History
A man dreams of a box of gold waiting for him at the end of a cave. Curbed by his religious belief that it is not permissible to go after it himself, he employs the assistance of a non-believer and together they embark on a long journey across the Iranian landscape in pursuit of a miracle. Their treasure hunt soon turns tempting also for those they meet along their way. Aliyar Rasti’s allegorical breakthrough turns a road trip into a play of hide and seek between faith and human frailty.
Bread and Alley
After returning from an errand to get bread, a young boy encounters a dog that frightens him making the journey to get home more difficult than he could’ve imagined.
The Night
An Iranian couple living in the US become trapped inside a hotel when insidious events force them to face the secrets that have come between them, in a night that never ends.
Life and a Day
Somaieh, the youngest daughter of an indigent family, is getting married and fear is overwhelming each and every member of the family regarding how to overcome their difficulties after she's gone.
Law of Tehran
Samad is nobody’s fool. The narcotics officer has seen his share of a drug dealer’s lies and games, and his patience has come to run thin. While searching for the infamous drug baron Nasser Khakzad, he and his colleague Hamid scour the streets of Tehran, turning an overcrowded prison on its head. With his rough and dubious approach, Samad finally manages to find the criminal’s whereabouts – but things do not quite go according to plan...
About Elly
The mysterious disappearance of a kindergarten teacher during a picnic in the north of Iran is followed by a series of misadventures for her fellow travelers.
The Lizard
The satirical commentary on clergymen in post-revolutionary Iran. While in prison, petty criminal Reza (Parviz Parastui) comes across a clergyman, sparking a plan for escape. Reza dons his new acquaintance's clerical robes and makes a bid for freedom. He soon learns that being a clergyman brings little respect from the public. Reza travels to the outlying villages, from where he plots to escape the country. However, his plans must be put on hold when the villagers accept him into their community and expect him to perform religious duties. Will Reza's prison break transform him into an unlikely pillar of the community?
Stranger and the Fog
In a remote seaside village, the peaceful lives of the residents are upended when they spot a mysterious boat drifting toward the shore. Upon pulling it in, they find a weary and wounded stranger named Ayat, who has no memory of how he got there. He only recalls being attacked and barely escaping with his life. As Ayat tries to rebuild his sense of self and uncover the truth about his past, he becomes a source of curiosity and suspicion in the community.
The House Is Black
Set in a leper colony in the north of Iran, The House is Black juxtaposes "ugliness," of which there is much in the world as stated in the opening scenes, with religion and gratitude.
Close-Up
This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
A Moment of Innocence
A semi-autobiographical account of Makhmalbaf's experience as a teenager when, as a 17-year-old, he stabbed a policeman at a protest rally. Two decades later, he tracks down the policeman he injured in an attempt to make amends.
Terrestrial Verses
A satirical take on the mundane absurdities of life in modern-day Iran, these nine vignettes illuminate the lighter side of enduring under authoritarian rule. Whether choosing a name for a newborn, graduating from grade school, getting a driver’s license, applying for a job, or seeking approval for a film script, if you live in Iran, you best come fluent in Orwellian discourse.
Reading Lolita in Tehran
As Islamic morality squads stage arbitrary raids in Tehran and as fundamentalists seize hold of the universities, Azar Nafisi, an inspired teacher, secretly gathers six of her most committed female students to read forbidden western classics. Unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, they soon removed their veils, their stories intertwining with the novels they read: just like the heroines of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James or Jane Austen, the women in Nafisi’s living room dare to dream, hope and love as we experience the complexity of the lives of individuals facing political, moral and personal siege.
Grassland
The truth carries a heavy burden, whether it is said that it sets off a storm, or it remains in the heart that disturbs man. Between telling the truth and revealing a secret or being silent and expedient, one is preferable to the other.
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