Iran

A first-grade primary school teacher in a poor suburb of Tehran assigns a letter to each student and asks them to bring items starting with an assigned letter, related to their fathers' jobs. Mehdi's father is a fruit seller and he must bring 30 apples («Seeb» in Farsi) to class on the «S» Day. However, an unfortunate event immerses the family in a crisis. Saeed, Mehdi's older brother, should find a way to overcome this challenge and help Mehdi for «the apple day». More

In downtown Tehran, Farzaneh, a young driving instructor, spots her husband, Jalal, walking into a woman’s apartment. When she confronts him, Jalal claims he was out of town for work. He decides to check out the building for himself. There, he meets a woman who is the spitting image of Farzaneh. Her name is Bita. Stunned, the two compare family photos: Bita’s husband also looks identical to Jalal. BONUS: Q&A at the Toronto Filmfestival More

Forty years ago, during the uprising to overthrow the Shah’s regime in Iran, protestors set fire to movie theaters as a way of showing opposition to Western culture. Many cinemas were burned down. In one tragic case, a theater was set on fire with four hundred people inside, most of whom were burned alive. Forty years have passed and, in contemporary Iran, four individuals also decide to burn a cinema down. Their intended target is a theater showing a film about an unearthed, unexploded missile. Will past and present meet? More

Heshmat, an exemplary husband and father, gets up very early every day. Where does he go? Pouya cannot imagine killing another man, yet he is told he must do so. Javad doesn’t know that proposing to his beloved won’t be the only surprise on her birthday. Bahram is a physician but is unable to practice medicine. He has decided to explain to his visiting niece the reason for his life as an outcast. More

Hasan is full of rage. He's been blacklisted and hasn't been allowed to make a film in years. His star, a woman he adores, is impatient and wants to work with other directors. His wife seems to have fallen out of love with him, and his mother has become old and is slowly losing her mind. Worst of all, film directors across the city are being murdered one after the other, but the serial killer is inexplicably ignoring him. More

Reza (35), having distanced himself from the urban quagmire, leads a simple life along with his wife and sole child, somewhere in a remote village in Northern Iran. He spends his days working in his gold fish farm. Nearby, a private company with close links to the government and local authorities, has taken control of nearly every aspect of the regional life. More

An orange Chevrolet Impala drives across a cemetery towards an abandoned shipwreck in the middle of a desert landscape. It is the 22nd of January, 1965. The day before, the Iranian prime minister was shot dead in front of the parliament building. Inside the wreck, a banished political prisoner has hung himself. The walls are covered in diary entries, literary quotes and strange symbols. More

A young girl informs her father she’s been kidnapped and asks him to bring the ransom money. Panicked, her father and brothers go to Tehran to look for her. They are unaware, however, that the girl has in fact  eloped with her boyfriend and now spends her time in the company of a band of street musicians. Following the arrest of the band leader and full of the love for her boyfriend, the young girl descends an uncertain path. More

A group of students decides to camp on a desolate Caspian region which runs a competition of kite flying during the winter solstice. Not far from the camp, live Babak and Saeed, two grim cooks. Armed with sharp knives, they roam the forest in search of meat to serve the decrepit restaurant they run nearby. More

Arash is an Iranian academic who lives in the West. He returns to teach classes in Shiraz, where his mother lives, far from Tehran. Trapped in a whirlwind of family and financial intrigues, he plunges back into the difficult hours of his childhood at the beginning of the Iraq-Iran war in 1981. Following the death of his father and discovering what has become of his "respectable family", he is forced to make choices. More

Leyla and Kaveh are the instruments of a cruel and bizarre game. The well-situated couple drive through the mountains distributing plastic bags full of money to every poor and unfortunate person they meet. At first everything goes according to plan as they disdainfully “share the joy” with their shocked “neighbors” while documenting the event via cellphone. They encounter those, however, who refuse the strange gift – and others who end up offending the irresponsible strangers. More

Simin wants to leave Iran with her husband Nader and daughter Termeh. She has already made all the necessary arrangements. Nader, however, is having second thoughts. He is worried about leaving behind his father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. For this reason he decides to call off the trip altogether. As a result of Nader’s decision, Simin decides to sue for divorce at the family court. When her request is rejected, however, she refuses to live with Nader, moving instead into her parents’ home. More

Recently released from prison, Ali makes the most of his return, amidst much talk of the upcoming elections and promises of change. Despite working nights, he tries to spend the most time possible with his beautiful wife and young daughter. To escape the stress of urban living, Ali retreats to his favorite pastime of hunting in the secluded forest north of town. Tragedy strikes and Ali's wife Sara is accidentally killed in a police shoot-out with demonstrators. More

Hassan vit seul avec son oncle et un âne. Alam travaille dans un élevage de poulet, les oreilles perpétuellement collées à des écouteurs pour ses leçonsd’anglais. Il rêve de partir à Bakou avec Ana. Un photographe emmène un musicien pour faire des portraits des traditions de Golestan, où vit tout ce joli monde, non loin de la Caspienne et du Turkménistan. Babak Jalali est retourné saisir le pouls de sa bourgade natale.   Des moments de pur cinéma More

After having spent many years in Germany, Ahmad returns to his native Iran for a holiday. His friends from his student days organise a three-day breakon the Caspian Sea. One of the party, a fun-loving woman named Sepideh takes the matter in hand. Unbeknown to the rest of the group, she has alsoinvited a young woman named Elly, who is a nursery school teacher at her daughter’s kindergarten. Ahmad has just emerged from an unhappy marriage and is now divorced from his German wife. He would very much like to begin a new life with an Iranian woman. More

The film portrays three couples on the eve of Nouruz, the Iranian New Year. Rouhi, a young woman who is about to get married, takes a small job as a cleaner in an apartment in northern Tehran to finance her marriage. When she arrives in that apartment, she finds herself in a heated dispute between Mojdeh and Morteza. Mojdeh suspects her husband Morteza of cheating on her and her neighbour Simin, and obliges Rouhi to shadow them. Rouhi gets more and more between the fronts of the fighting couple. More

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Together with his young son a father heads off for an inimitable quest: By car they drive through the nightmarish chaos of the erathquake catastrophe from 1990. The destruction demanded over 50'000 deaths, entire villages were razed to the ground. People report how they were suddenly faced with the catastrophe, standing in front of nothing, having lost their entire families with over thirty relatives. But still the film is not a report of terror. More

Bahram Beyzaie’s debut feature about a well-meaning schoolteacher in Tehran who's embattled by changes of fortune, was enormously successful in its time, but had fallen out of view in post-revolutionary Iran. This version presents the film as restored in 2011 by the World Cinema Foundation at Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna/L’immagine Ritrovata laboratory, with the involvement of Bahram Beyzaie himself. More