Discoveries from Iran World Cinema

A young married couple's disagreement over money delays the husband from traveling from Iran to the U.S. where he need to renew his green card.

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.

Zohre's shoes are gone; her older brother Ali lost them. They are poor, there are no shoes for Zohre until they come up with an idea: they will share one pair of shoes. School awaits.

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.

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.

Belonging to the Documentary genre, the film is a poetic self-portrait and biographical journey of Nima Beheshtinia. Using archival footage from his personal cassettes, interwoven with contemporary imagery, Nima creates a lyrical narrative inspired by his own book, "Az Mano DivaanegiHaayam" (Of Me and My Madness). The official film poster is also part of the "Az Mano DivaanegiHaayam" collection, a multimedia series consisting of two paintings, a book and a feature film, all created by Nima Beheshtinia.

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.

Story of Rumi, his friendship with Shams Tabrizi, the love he had for him and the great influence of Shams over him in his life, his poetry and his love for God.

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.

There is a man and a woman in a car. They inadvertently become tense due to the hijab of the woman's hair. In fact, if the woman's hair is seen, they will be caught by police cameras in the streets. The man constantly tells the woman to bring her scarf forward and keep the hijab so that his car is not confiscated by the police, And this is the beginning of the story...

A Pharaoh dreams of a future conqueror who will threaten his rule. As persecution begins, Moses is born secretly and rescued from Infanticide. Raised under divine guidance, he matures to confront tyranny and lead his people toward liberation.

An 8-year-old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.

The brothers of Yusuf (Joseph), jealous of their father Yaqub’s (Jacob's) love for him, throw him into a well. A caravan rescues Yusuf, and years later he is sold as a slave in the market of Egypt. Zulaikha, Yusuf's owner, falls in love with him, and after an incident, the Aziz of Egypt (Zulaikha’s husband) has him imprisoned. Seven years later, Yusuf is released due to his interpretation of the Pharaoh’s dream and rises to the rank of Aziz of Egypt.

Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iraq border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.

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.

The story of Imam Hossein's battle in Karbala, an unfair war which made one the most important effects in Islam history.

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.

Abousofyan tells Aboutaleb, Muhammad's uncle, that in the upcoming morning he wants to kill the holy prophet of Islam and Muslims, who are in boycott. Aboutaleb remembers the past years when Abraha charges ahead Mecca to ruin the house of God. but by God's will his army loses out against millions of small birds sent by GOD. A month later, Muhammad is born.

Rahim is in prison because of a debt he was unable to repay. During a two-day leave, he tries to convince his creditor to withdraw his complaint against the payment of part of the sum. But things don't go as planned. Is he truly a hero?

At the age of 74, many people retire themselves or go and spend the rest of their life in elderly’s house. But Kim Dong-Ho has made the decision to live like a young and energetic man until the end of his life. He gets up early around 4 am every morning. He does his exercise for an hour. Then he checks the news and respond to his emails. After that, he takes the bus to his work. He is currently working in a university of film and media, which he has launched himself two years ago. KIM is the same man whom established the largest Asian Film Festival when he was almost 60 years old. Now that he is 74 years old, he has just decided to make his first film as a director.

Following crackdowns on protests in Iran, civilians begin documenting the unrest from behind windows. When a woman is shot while recording, a film student writes her a letter raising the question: Can revolution emerge from behind windows?

An anthology of short films inspired by the events of the September 11 World Trade Center attacks.

A yellow cab is driving through the vibrant and colourful streets of Tehran. Very diverse passengers enter the taxi, each candidly expressing their views while being interviewed by the driver who is no one else but the director Jafar Panahi himself. His camera placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio captures the spirit of Iranian society through this comedic and dramatic drive…

Maryam (Negar Javaherian) and Reza (Shahab Hosseini) are different from other people, it's not just a simple difference, but a very big difference. They must try to prove to others they have solved the big difference with the miracle of love ...

At the age of 40, Leila has spent her entire life caring for her parents and four brothers. A family that is constantly arguing and under pressure from various debts in the face of sanctions against Iran. While her brothers are struggling to make ends meet, Leila makes a plan.

After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.

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.

According to the true story of Abdolrasoul Zarrin, he was the Iranian sniper of the Iran-Iraq war, who is known as the best sniper in the contemporary world wars with a record of 3,000 successful shootings with Dragunov weapons.

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.

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...

Solomon, Prophet and the King, has asked God to give him an ideal kingdom which has never been given to anybody before. He is told to prepare himself and his subjects with evil and unearthly creatures that haunt the men.

A film about what totalitarians want from election, is second film from Kaleme which released before 10th parliament election of Iran

Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.

The Rule of Accident is about a group of theatre students who are trying to prepare and present a piece of theatre.

A man enters a bar, sits and observes, not speaking. Gradually, the silent presence of the stranger disturbs the other customers.

A woman embarks on an unyielding and possibly hopeless search for her missing husband, a journey that strains her already fragile relationship with her daughter. Along the way, she also faces the unwelcome advances of her persistent brother-in-law.

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.

Niloufar (Taraneh Alidoosti) lives with her family. After an incident happened, her family exposed to a deep trouble: they have to provide a large amount of money to save a family member's life while they have only three days ...

A youth (Abolfazl Ghorbani) runs for his life after he sees a woman (Leila Boushehri) dispose of a dead body.

On a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.

Kaveh Nariman is a Doctor in the medical examiner's office. One day at his work he meets a corpse which is very familiar to him.

The mood in the summer villa in northern Iran, near the Caspian Sea, is exuberant. Milad and Armin gather with friends for a weekend shaped by effortless closeness. The news that Bita is pregnant by Milad adds to the fragility of their relationship. The next morning, the hosts’ fathers arrive, each carrying their own fractures

An elderly couple go about their routine of cleaning their gabbeh, while bickering gently with each other. Magically, a young woman appears, helping the two clean the rug. This young woman belongs to the clan whose history is depicted in the design of the gabbeh, and the rug recounts the story of the courtship of the young woman by a stranger from the clan.

While making a film about the Israeli-Palestinian war, an Iranian filmmaker is thrust into it himself. He is forced to flee Tehran with his family, and his political essay transforms into a twelve‑day diary of survival, exile and identity.

Growing up in Tehran, a capital of the 21st century... From 2007 to 2025, within a loving family, eighteen years in the life of three sisters, from their early childhood to their daily lives as young women in search of freedom. Brought up in the traditional way, witnessing the struggles of a youth in perpetual movement, what is their future in today's Iranian society?

The story of a blind dervish named Bab'Aziz and his spirited granddaughter, Ishtar. Together they wander the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that takes place just once every thirty years. With faith as their only guide, the two journey for days through the expansive, barren landscape.

A hundred and fourteen famous Iranian theater and cinema actresses and a French star: mute spectators at a theatrical representation of Khosrow and Shirin, a Persian poem from the twelfth century, put on stage by Kiarostami. The development of the text -- long a favorite in Persia and the Middle East -- remains invisible to the viewer of the film, the whole story is told by the faces of the women watching the show.

The story of 12-year-old Ali and his three friends. Together they work hard to survive and support their families, doing small jobs in a garage and committing petty crimes to make fast money. In a turn of events that seems miraculous, Ali is entrusted to find hidden treasure underground. He recruits his gang, but first, to gain access to the tunnel, the children must enroll at the Sun School, a charitable institution that tries to educate street kids and child laborers, close to where the treasure is located.

Maliha loves her cousin Amir. But Maliheh's brother Abram opposes this friendship. Maliheh hides in her suitcase to be with Amir. But the suitcase is handed over during an accident, while Abram thinks that his cousin Amir has stolen his sister and is chasing her everywhere. Meanwhile, Mansour, who is a thief's suitcase and has obtained the suitcase containing the laundry, first tries to get rid of the suitcase, but then promises to take him to Amir. Eventually, after many adventures, Abram surrenders to the love of Amir and Maliheh and agrees to marry them.

As Raman prepares to migrate out of Iran, his friends plot the perfect way to celebrate his impending departure. However, their path is plagued with conflict; an unresolved argument over the accidental death of a friend and a conservative elder brother who looks upon their lives with disdain, further resolves to stop the celebration.

Two Iranian pilots are in a special mission to save the people of a Syrian city who are surrounded by the terrorists. But they have to face many challenges before manage to accomplish their mission.

Short ethnographic documentray about Arba'een, a Shia Muslim religious observance

A snake catcher working for the Iranian antivenom department dies on the job. Once he miraculously returns to the living, the resurrected man refuses to go back to his old life.

Mahin lives alone in Tehran since her husband’s death and her daughter’s departure for Europe, until an afternoon tea with friends leads her to break her solitary routine and revitalize her love life.

During the 2006 World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain, numerous young women are caught and rounded up for dressing as men so they could gain access to the game. Guarded by several soldiers in a holding pen, the women attempt to keep updated on the score.

A man who is a news reporter is going to Germany from America to meet his son who is living there. There he tells his son that he is divorced now. The father is pick pocket by two guys.

Desiderium lyrically charts the hapless loves of a three brother: Majid, they young handicapped brother with a deformed head falls in love with Aghdas, a prostitute hired by his eldest brother Habib to entertain him, not knowing the truth about her profession. Karim, the middle brother is so infatuated with a quail that he almost completely ignores his wife and her emotions. Habib himself is in love with Foroogh, a tailor lady who lives with them, while his sense of responsibility about Majid keeps him from requiting her affections.

Set against the backdrop of Iran's strict and oppressive legal system, this anthology film tells the stories of four men who each face a moral crisis when having to deal with death penalties.

Various women struggle to function in the oppressively sexist society of contemporary Iran.

Several people try to take advantage of a little girl's innocence to hustle money her mom gave to her to buy a goldfish with.