House of Sand and Fog

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.

The New Country

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.

Tales

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.

7 Months Pregnant

Revenge may have irreversible consequences.

Maybe Some Other Time

Famed actress Susan Taslimi plays three roles here: Kian, who doubts her identity; Vida, the twin sister, a self-assured artist; and their mother, who gives up one child out of fear of poverty, then deprives the other of affection because she deeply regrets the child whom she has abandoned.

Kandahar

After an Afghanistan-born woman who lives in Canada receives a letter from her suicidal sister, she takes a perilous journey through Afghanistan to try to find her.

The Wind Will Carry Us

Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.

Les poupées persanes

The Darkest Side

Five psychological thrilling tales about the emotions that can destroy our souls: despair, temptation, guilt, doubt and anger. Which one has the worst consequence?

A temporary story

In the middle of a midlife crisis, Sacha leaves his girlfriend and moves into his grandparents' Airbnb. There he meets Marjan, a married Iranian woman. The involuntary encounter becomes a moment of new possibilities.

Seven Winters in Tehran

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.

Any Day Now

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.

Blackboards

Itinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Said falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes as his wife Halaleh, the clan's lone woman, a widow with a young son. Reeboir attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border; they're mules, always on the move. Said and Reeboir try to teach as their potential students keep walking. Danger is close; armed soldiers patrol the skies, the roads, and the border. Is there a role for a teacher? Is there hope?

The Stoning of Soraya M.

In 1986 Iran, Sahebjam, whose car breaks down in a remote village, enters into a conversation with Zahra, who relays to him the story about her niece, Soraya, whose arranged marriage to an abusive tyrant ended in tragedy.

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.

Romantic Nostalgia

During a demonstration, with the assistance of a man named Manouchehr, Fereshteh succeeds to get rid of the security forces. After victory of the revolution, they accidentally meet each other and consequently get married despite disagreement of Fereshteh’s family. Coming back from the honeymoon, they are encountered with a new situation altering all the peoples’ lives. The men should go to the war front for defending their country after the invasion of Iraqi Army to Iran.

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.

The Old Young Crow

An Iranian boy befriends an old Japanese woman at a graveyard in Tokyo.

Women's Prison

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.

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.

Flashdance

Alex Owens, a young woman juggling between two odd jobs, aspires to become a successful ballet dancer. Nick, who is her boss and lover, supports and encourages her to fulfil her dream.

Water and Fire

A pretty young girl falls for an enigmatic, shy man who sweeps her off her feet. She becomes pregnant but is not allowed to tell him. His advisers are adamant. Back home, they have set up a wedding with the daughter of an antagonistic family and marriage will put an end to the blood feud between them.

Beauty and the Beast

The story of a gentle-hearted beast in love with a simple and beautiful girl. She is drawn to the repellent but strangely fascinating Beast, who tests her fidelity by giving her a key, telling her that if she doesn't return it to him by a specific time, he will die of grief. She is unable to return the key on time, but it is revealed that the Beast is the genuinely handsome one. A simple tale of tragic love that turns into a surreal vision of death, desire, and beauty.

Starving in Suburbia

When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?

All Three of Us

An Iranian family survives the shah and the ayatollah and moves to France. This story follows the family through it all. Despite the politics, revolution, prison, beatings, assassinations and suicides this is a comedy.

Tehran Taboo

The lives of three strong-willed women and a young musician cross paths in Tehran’s schizophrenic society where sex, adultery, corruption, prostitution and drugs coexist with strict religious law. In this bustling modern metropolis, avoiding prohibition has become an everyday sport and breaking taboos can be a means of personal emancipation.

Fireworks Wednesday

Rouhi, a young bride-to-be, is hired as a maid for an affluent family in Tehran. Upon arriving, she is suddenly thrust into an explosive domestic conflict. The wife is convinced her husband is having an affair and enlists Rouhi as a spy, to follow her husband, and confirm her suspicions. What Rouhi discovers, however, threatens not only their marriage but her own future.

No Bears

Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been barred from leaving the country, arrives at a village on the Iran-Turkey border to supervise a film based on a real-life couple seeking passports to Europe being shot in Turkey, but both his stay and the production run into trouble.

No One Knows About Persian Cats

Iranian musicians Negar and Ashkan look for band members to play at a London concert ... and the visa that allows them to leave Tehran to do so.

A Separation

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.

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.

Septembers of Shiraz

In this adaptation of the critically acclaimed debut novel by Iranian American author Dalia Sofer, a secular Jewish family is caught up in the maelstrom of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

The Basilisks

The uneventful lives of three young men who live in a small, poverty-stricken village in southern Italy.

The Color of Paradise

Mohammad joyfully returns to his tiny village on summer vacation from the Institute for the Blind, unaware of his widowed father's intentions to disown him in order to win the hand—and dowry—of a local woman. With the wedding swiftly approaching, Mohammad's future hangs precariously in the balance as his father struggles against his destiny, unable to see the wonder of life and love that's so clear to his son.

The Salesman

Forced out of their apartment due to dangerous works on a neighboring building, Emad and Rana move into a new flat in the center of Tehran. An incident linked to the previous tenant will dramatically change the young couple’s life.

Parisienne

18-year-old Lina arrives in Paris for her studies. She comes to look for what she has never found in Lebanon, her country of origin: a certain form of freedom. The survival instinct as the only baggage, she sails from one Paris to another to the rhythm of her romantic encounters.

A Brand New Life

Young Jin-hee is taken by her father to an orphanage near Seoul. He leaves her there never to return, and she struggles to come to grips with her fate. Jin-hee desperately believes her father will come back for her and take her on a trip.

Argo

As the Iranian revolution reaches a boiling point, a CIA 'exfiltration' specialist concocts a risky plan to free six Americans who have found shelter at the home of the Canadian ambassador.

Chaos

A bourgeois couple, modern yet conventional. One night by accident, a young prostitute barges into their lives. Hounded down, beaten up, threatened, she will continue to struggle, with the help of a well off lady, first for her survival-her resurrection-then for her dignity and freedom. Stormy encounters for everyone involved.

The Man Who Sold His Skin

To be able to travel to Europe and find the love of his life, Sam Ali, a Syrian refugee, accepts to have his back tattooed by one of the most sulfurous contemporary artist; becoming that way a precious work of art.