Discoveries from Iran World Cinema

A documentary about the Paykan, Iran's former national car, and its fate.

This melodramatic story centers around two college graduates who share a passion for poetry and literature. The opening scene is a poetry competition where the two protagonists meet for the...

Salim Shaheen film from Afghanistan

A young group of people decides to make a movie, not just any movies, but a feature one

There is no escape… From one side of the globe to the other, there is no escaping the faces, the visions, the ever-watchful camera. There is no escaping the mask, there is no escaping the resonating echoes of images and sounds that cross each other over time. There is no escaping the cinema. There is no escaping the terrors of the mind. “A mysterious loner, perhaps a poet, journeys through a series of uncanny surrealistic landscapes with an unclear purpose. His adventure is divided into three sections. The main theme of this experiment is to compare the eerier qualities of different landscapes and interpose the characters within them, elaborating the project’s ongoing preoccupation with extracting sinister moods from ordinary settings. In a way, these can be seen as experimental horror films in which an atmosphere of dread is evoked and sustained without the expected narrative trappings.”

In this single-take ode to the paintings of M.C. Escher, several students' days intersect in logically impossible ways.

Mr. Moosavi, a country schoolteacher, must undertake an arduous journey to fetch medicine for his village's sick. Accompanied by his student and a villager, he travels through a blizzard and is pursued by a pack of hungry wolves.

A bakery in Herat in Afghanistan. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, a dozen employees and apprentices repeat the same gestures, while the camera raises questions about the outside world, about images.

An unsettling psychological descent into guilt, denial, and fractured identity. A father attends his daughter's funeral—a girl who was brutally assaulted and murdered. But when a young stranger, eerily resembling the father, appears and begins an unwanted conversation, the fragile facade of reality starts to crack. What begins as a confrontation spirals into something far more harrowing: a reckoning with a buried self. Inspired by Amélie Nothomb’s The Enemy’s Cosmetique, this film explores the monstrous duality of man—and the haunting price of facing one’s own darkness.

A theater directed by Alireza Koushk Jalali

A young couple gets to know each other on a honeymoon trip; A recognition that comes from a game and turns love into hate.

Making a stage from two public spaces in Iran which women are prohibited from entering, Maryam Tafakory’s depiction of men and women coming of age draws parallels while commenting on this separation of the genders. The authority of tradition is metaphorically undermined by obstructed onscreen text, while a woman’s low hums and whispers remind us of the presence of the body in the enactment of rituals.

A woman political prisoner escapes execution in Iran. Three different narratives are intertwined to tell her story: the reality, the story of a camel that ran away from being sacrificed and a subjective journey in the world of Persian myths. Shall she find a way to save her life by using the help of a powerful phoenix, magical feathers and inspiring forces?

"Hello Life" is the story of an old man and an old woman who are neighbors and have a lot of problems together. When a few young people enter the apartment, their problems and

Under the tender gaze of his father, a teenager with Down's syndrome longs to visit Paris. The “City of Light” has always held a strong attraction for him, and he is ready to do anything to make his dream come true.

A recollection of her childhood through adult eyes. An Iranian woman recalls growing up during the Iraq-Iranian war through her father’s photo album while confronting her loneliness in marriage. A photo-novel finalized in post-production in 2020 in Belgium.

Salim Shaheen film from Afghanistan

Major Nabavi , an officer of the Law Enforcement Force, infiltrates a drug trafficking ring on the orders of his commander in order to report the transaction of a drug shipment.

Hossein, who is about to marry his cousin Fereshteh for the second time, suddenly finds out that his long-lost son Reza is actually alive and living with his old friend Ahmad and Ahmad's wife, Maryam.

A guy who calls himself a professor claims he's invented a drug that brings youth back to old people. He picks an old man and tests his drug on him. At the same time, a baby is left with him to look after, but the professor, who's lost his focus, thinks that using too much of the drug has turned the old man into a baby. His reaction to this incident eventually lands him in a mental hospital.

Ahmad and Mamali lose their jobs after fighting with their taxi owners.

Two friends discover a diamond mine and intend to acquire it.

A mysterious case opens and the police starts detecting.

A theater directed by Shahabeddin Hosseinpour

Apples are always something to fear.

Zoe's voice is stored in a bottle. Something both ethereal and mechanical is in the air. Farid would like to build a device that will allow him to record this invisible movement. Reality shatters into pieces, voices from the past and the future begin to materialize. Zoya is on her way to the moon. An electrifying image, born from the radiant waves that sweep through the air with the intensity of a storm. Shayannejad's debut film was made by the independent filmmaking group Kamja Film.

Maria is a middle-aged single woman with three children. Saman is a newly married young man. Arash is an eighteen-year-old high-school dropout. All three are transsexuals living in Iran. INSIDE OUT features intimate conversations with Maria, Saman, and Arash, allowing them to tell their stories, including the lifelong struggle to come to terms with their gender dysphoria, how this mind/body conflict has affected their everyday behavior, and the impact of hormone therapy and sex-change surgery on their lives. The film also includes revealing interviews with a Muslim cleric, who explains that the majority of Iran's religious leaders consider transsexuality to be a human rights issue and therefore support gender reassignment surgery; a psychiatrist, who explains the difference between homosexuality and transsexuality and how the condition cannot be cured psychologically; and a surgeon, who discusses the nature and the difficulties of the required surgery.

A few men and women who went to the desert for a picnic meet two "giants". The giants fight because of one of the girls and their work is dragged to the city. Urban civilization gradually turns them into two different beings. Desert giants learn how to live and love in the city and then return to their village with the girls they have married.

This little known documentary short is actually the first Iranian film to compete in the Cannes festival. It is one of several Iranian documentaries focused on the ancient ruins of Persepolis, a very popular symbol in the nationalist project led by the Shah around the legacy of "Cyrus the Great."

Seventeen days till execution.

A review on contemporary story writing in Iran, with the presence of three famous novelists, and using the great novelist's pictures. A documentary is ordered for screen in "Yalda literature prize" ceremony

In the form of humor, this film examines the social issues of the day, including divorce, social networks and its harms in the family, especially young spouses.

A thirty-nine minute sketch film for TASTE OF CHERRY that Abbas Kiarostani made with his son Bahman Kiarostami.

Biopic on the classic Persian poet of the 11th century Ferdowsi, and the author of Shahnameh, which is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the greatest epic of Persian speaking countries.

Soma/Homa unfolds within the confines of a modest student flatshare in a small Iranian town, where a group of young people navigate the fragile terrain of everyday life. Between moments of laughter, silence, intoxication, and quiet despair, the film traces their shared routines, longings, and disillusionments shaped by the unseen pressure of state repression. It is a meditation on life and death, drugs and dreams, where survival is both physical and emotional.

Short animation by Jafar Tejaratchi

The life story of Hossein Amalaki, one of the commanders of the iran-iraq war.

Hamid takes money from his father's pocket at the request of his brother Mohsen to go to the cinema.

Tara (2021)

In Iran, the traditional and patriarchal society does not permit death notices to bear the image of the deceased. Nahid embarks on a revolution, even though she knows that she will incur the wrath of her family.

A fraudulent appears in the form of a hero, but cannot lift weights. And He loves to show off.

This documentary follows the life of an 80-year-old mother named Firouzeh who is fond of her isolated lifestyle in nature with her cows. The film shows her kind and loving character and demonstrates her bravery and strength tackling the hardship of life in the Alborz mountains without the modern comforts of technology. She believes happiness lies in the simplicities of life.

It's 2004, and the news that Saddam Hussein has died sends shock waves through the Middle East. Shaho is the son of an elderly man of Iranian Kurdish heritage; the old man's health is failing him after suffering a stroke, and he's convinced he doesn't have long to live. Shaho, his father, and their family have been living in an Iraqi refugee camp for a while, but with the passing of Saddam, Shaho believes the time is right for them to return to Iran, where father can spend his last days in the land of his birth. However, as Shaho is making plans for the trip back to Iran, his cousin Sheelan visits the family for the first time in twenty years; her parents fled to Sweden when she was a child, where she's now a physician, and she wants her dying uncle to join her there where he'll be safe and well cared for.

Story of the Hassanlou chalice, which becomes the story of Halladj.

Reza, a young truck driver at a truck stop, falls for a girl. His brother, a teacher in the literacy corps, also becomes smitten with her. Unaware of Reza's feelings, the teacher asks his brother to propose to the girl on his behalf. Reza agrees, but a wicked and lustful man who also desires the girl pits the two brothers against each other. He sabotages the truck stop in an attempt to eliminate them. Reza thwarts the lustful man's plan, but the younger brother is killed by him. Eventually, Reza captures the killer, and the police arrest him.

A Lost Persian Film.

Haji has made his family hate him due to his stinginess and greed for money.

A play reading directed by Milad Jabari Molana

A rogue hunter named Sanjar causes the death of a village woman...

Child soldier is about the unheard story of child soldiers of the Iran-Iraq war, a documentary that has interviewed the child soldiers of this war among unseen images of the Iran-Iraq war. For the first time in four decades, they recount memories that they have never shared with their families before.

In an unfamiliar corner of the city, Peyman finds himself disoriented and unsure of his whereabouts. Urgency mounts as he races against time to find Mahsa, fearing that the situation will become more complex if they are not swiftly reunited.

An old Kurdish man Hussein Mahmood who is a carpenter tries to make artificial legs for people who have lost their legs.

A documentary about Majid Entezami (Persian: مجید انتظامی) (born 9 March 1948). Entezami is an Iranian composer, conductor, musician, and oboist.

An Iranian woman leaves her husband and travels to Russia. Memories of her World Cup trip come up, as well as an uncomfortable secret.

Two men ward off loneliness and boredom while guarding a mine in rural Iran.