Discoveries from Iran World Cinema

Experimental Short Film By Fatemeh Akbari Mehr.

Two buddies, Abbas and Abram, have a long-standing, honest friendship.

Iranian filmed theater. An actor is going to meet the hero of his dreams.

Saeed and Shabnam invite their friends to a pristine and scenic place for the weekend. They all pitch a tent by the lake. The friends think the rustling sound in the reeds and the presence of a snake in the basket of dishes is a joke by Saeed and Shabnam. But when Afshin disappears and the body is in the ditch, they run towards the car in panic, when suddenly...

Inside a polished apartment, a pious man leads a double life. By day, he’s the image of virtue; by night, drawn into a world of desire and denial. But when a single test reveals the truth, the safe house begins to fall apart.

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Nazi intends to marry a young man whose father, Mr. Mamluk, is against him.

The story of two young sisters who live with their mother and brother. With the outbreak of the coronavirus and the closure of schools, they are forced into home quarantine, while their mother is a member of the medical staff.

A Lost Persian Film. The young man saves a rich girl from drowning at sea, and this incident leads to an acquaintance and then a mutual love. The girl hires the young man as her steward. The girl's stepmother falls in love with the young man, but the young man pays no attention to her. To attract her attention, the stepmother resorts to magic and gives her a potion that causes madness. The young man escapes and the girl pursues her. A storm breaks out, so severe that the house catches fire and the stepmother is also burned in it. The young man falls from the mountain and, due to a blow to the head, regains his senses, finds his daughter, and from then on they begin a peaceful life together.

A Lost Persian Film.

A worker, fired from a stone crushing plant, decides on a drastic action.

Dr. Haghi and his wife are killed in a car accident, and their son Nader survives the incident but loses his ability to speak and hear.

A young man from a small town comes to Tehran and stays in a building with many tenants, and after a short time, he falls for the neighbor's daughter.

Mirza Abdullah, a stingy and mean old man, has made life difficult for his family. His young son, Fereydoun, is in love with their neighbor's daughter, Farideh, and they have agreed to marry.

After the death of her young husband, Mahmoud, Parvin leaves Abadan for Tehran to prevent her mental illness from worsening, and lives with her uncle and aunt. One night in a restaurant, she meets a young man named Saeed who bears a striking resemblance to her late husband.

An experimental 16-minute film based on a personal experience of lethargy. The monotonous and tedious life of a human being. There is an effort to move forward, but no dramatic events occur. The matter is not about suspense or revealing the plot. The focus is on sharing this lethargy and time with the audience. Part of the film belongs to the experiences of the audience, and what they construct in their minds and imagination.

In January 2007, I was stopped on the streets of Tehran by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who claimed I had been filming them with my Mini DV video camera. They detained me momentarily and erased 27 seconds of my footage by recording over it—pointing the lens at the white interior wall of their headquarters. This act of erasure now constitutes the artwork.

Unable to bear the financial pressure of raising a child, an Iranian couple decided to give up having children and instead use love and desire to give birth to an imaginary daughter. In this imaginary family, they are free from the constraints of reality and fully experience the joy and troubles of being parents. However, as time goes by, this carefully constructed dream of having a child begins to gradually devour the wife's sanity, pushing her to the brink of mental breakdown.

A family of three has recently moved in and the little girl inspects the new home with curiosity ,when a small cricket finds its way into their home as a surprise visitor. But with the father’s unexpected reaction, the child’s perspective begins to shift, turning a simple encounter into something far more unsettling.

A documentary exploring the portrayal of women in Iranian advertising, from their presence before the 1979 Revolution to their transformation and erasure in the years that followed.

A critical look at the westernization of the rural culture

We join Mino on her 27th birthday and through her eyes we observe her friend’s mental illnesses and disorders.

Lake Urmia, in northwest Iran, once the largest lake in the Middle East and the sixth largest saltwater lake on earth is rapidly losing water and drying up.

Amid persistent drought and a water conflict intensified by Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, Iran’s once-thriving Hamun Lake region has become a desolate wasteland. Its sole resident, an elderly woman, survives by collecting dead fish from the dried-up lakebed.

Parisa has spent two years training towards her goal: representing Iran as a fencer at the next Olympics. At the regional heats, however, she is suddenly told to fake an injury and withdraw from her next match because if she stages an injury, she will get a “nice reward”. If she doesn’t, the authorities may never let her compete again. But no reward could be enough for Parisa to give up her one shot at the Games.

Crew of a film are traveling to its filming location after 25 years

A theater directed by Hossein Tabrizi

A theater directed by Setareh Aminian

A theater directed by Asha Mehrabi

After an unsuccessful marriage, young Maryam thinks of committing suicide in a way which would at least be of some use to others. She thus enters the Iran-Iraq war as a reporter. She is surrounded by suffering and pain and her time spent in the devastated desert landscape, armies spilling over from one side to the other depending on which has the upper hand, totally changes her vision of the world. 'Good Night Commander' describes the terror of war as seen through the eyes of a fragile woman who manages to overcome her thoughts of suicide on the battle field and eventually chooses life over death.

A clumsy hitchhiker, a mysterious driver, and a series of grisly murders intertwine in this atmospheric journey along a coastal road. A clumsy young man sets out on the road at midnight to unblock his chakras and reach the beach, unaware that many men have been murdered on this road, and some of these murders are attributed to mythical creatures.

Some children make a trap to catch a sparrow.

a man has killed another man because of something his brother said

A young boy vows a goat to cure his mother's illness, but the goat is pregnant.

The Brno gun turns Maryam and Qobaad bitter on the wedding night.

A transsexual teenage boy named Abraham was murdered and burned in a cave out of a small village. Police are after his religious father who is praying in a small mosque.

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Adolescent boys and girls wish for a better life due to the economic conditions of the family. Finally and in the continuation of the story, their wish is fulfilled and it brings new experiences with them.

Who was killed? Who killed him? And who filmed it all?

It is the story of two killers who want to end the life of a usual diner customer who eats there at 6 - a customer who is NOT there at 6 that night.

A young woman notices the presence of a man around her workplace.

A genius man in the field of electronics who left his education incomplete, under the influence of the unbalanced mental and psychological conditions of his childhood, at the suggestion of his uncle, who used to be the head of an unknown terrorist group, places a very powerful electronic bomb in the sewer under the central railway station building.

After the First World War, the German government faced economic problems due to the payment of reparations, but this crisis was resolved in Germany under the management of Professor Hjalmar Schacht. After a few years, the oil nationalization movement took place in Iran and Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh invited Schacht to Iran to use his help and advice, but the coup on August 19, 1953 prevented this from happening.

A short film that seems like a dreamscape, where sounds from the nature, music and poetic images are combined with ease, but we are clear that behind all this lies a personal experience and a strong authorial expression. Although never verbally stated, the author sends a clear feminist message of equality and freedom.

Stories of Iran’s past and present intersect in Rakhshan Banietemad’s reflective, absorbing and personal portrait of how political life shapes infant’s lives.

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Two female students and classmates Somayeh and Mitra, Mitra is not very constrained; She does not have a father and lives with her mother, who does not pay much attention to her lifestyle.

Seven Zagros Symphonies narrates the philosophy of seven musical maqams of the oldest wind instrument (shamshal) in the life of the people of Zagros. The documentary is narrated using the monologue of an old man who spent 65 years of his life playing the shamshal (a Kurdish wind instrument). The story of the film is character-oriented and the philosophy of the seven maqams in his life is implied.

A man opens the door.

A silent voice is for voices that are not heard before! For people who die in silence! And the only voice that they hear is the Fire sound.

In an old and mysterious house, a young girl has not left her dark room for years. A social worker enters this house to save the girl's life.

A film about conjugal visit in Iranian prisons and the problems of prisoners' wives.

Habib, a devout follower of Islam, finds himself in a difficult situation when he discovers that his mentally challenged child, has been involved in an illicit relationship with his beloved cow, which is the main source of income and livelihood for his family. In accordance with God's command in Islam, Habib is required to kill the cow and burn its meat as a form of repentance. However, Habib is determined to find a solution that will allow him to salvage the life of his cow and seek forgiveness from God.

The story of the film is about the first months of the imposed war. At a time when families in different cities of Khuzestan were forced to leave their homes and all their attachments and took refuge in other cities to save their lives. But in the meantime, the mother does not intend to leave her home. Meanwhile, the older son and the teenager of the family are angry with this decision of the mother. They constantly complain to their mother that they should leave like all the locals so that they are not destroyed. She argues with her mother under any pretext and talks about leaving. The mother, however, loves the house where she became a mother more than Edo imagines.

A little girl is forced to commit a robbery.

Amid economic and social suffocation, a couple is determined to end their misery, but realize that even death may not be a possibility for them.