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,...
Khorshid, a blind child growing up in Tajikistan, is constantly distracted by music and sounds. This frequently causes him to be late to his job as an instrument tuner even though he runs the risk of being fired at a time when his family is in danger of being evicted from their house.
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.
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...
After the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the restriction of women in public life, a preteen girl is forced to masquerade as a boy in order to find work to support her mother and grandmother.
A girl reaches the age of nine and is supposed to act as a grown woman according to her family. A girl participates in a bike race against the will of her husband. An elderly woman decides she wants to buy all the things she always wanted but could never get.
After twelve years of imprisonment by their own parents, two Iranian sisters are finally released by social workers to face the outside world for the first time.
The film follows a character known as The Cinematographer, who is looking for someone called Atieh (Future). As he calls out to her, he is magically transported back in time from the early twentieth century to the reign of Naser al-Din Shah in 19th century Iran. Captured by the Shah's guards, he...
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,...
Filmmakers from all over the world provide short films – each of which is eleven minutes, nine seconds, and one frame of film in length – that offer differing perspectives on the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Iman wants to go and fight in the Iran-Iraq War, but he has some problems that he has to solve first. The problems consist of his daughter’s wedding and treating his blind son. He is busy trying to solve these two problems when his other son returns from the front with wounded legs. Iman forgets...
In the midst of a mid-life crisis Jan, a 40 year old dancing teacher, decides to instigate a revolution against himself. His first act is to summon each of his four lovers, who are unaware of each other, to join him at the dance studio where we assume he is a tutor. His revelations to the women...
A nostalgic look at the birth and death of arthouse film distribution in the early 2000s in Russia. The story of the Cinema Without Borders company and its two founders, Sam Klebanov and Anton Mazurov.
The wife of Nasim, an Afghan immigrant in Iran, is gravely ill. He needs money to pay for her care, but his day labor digging wells does not pay enough. A friend connects Nasim to a two-bit promoter who sells tickets to watch Nasim ride a bicycle continuously for a week. The promoter brings in sick...
Nogreh is a young Afghani woman living with her father and her sister-in-law, Leylomah, whose husband, Akhtar, is missing. Beyond the issue of Akhtar, Leylomah is most concerned with how to feed her baby. She cannot provide milk for her baby as her own hunger is preventing her from lactating....
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 movie consists of three episodes that explore the lives of poor and desperate in Iran. In episode one, a very poor couple with many crippled children abandon their newly born baby in hopes that it will have a better future. In the second episode, a mentally impaired and isolated young man tries...
Serikpai and Amir grow up without a father, who once went to work in Russia, but never returned. They are waiting for him and hoping. Waiting for her husband and wife Polina. She remembers the short happiness of her former life. She tries to resist the current life, but it is given to her at too...
