No one tells a story like the Middle East. It starts softly, almost in a whisper and before you know it, you’re holding your breath.

Normal

The refugee tragedy of recent years inspires Abbe Hassan for a shocking directorial feature debut, a journey into the brightest light and the deepest darkness of the human condition.

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A Syrian girl flees to Turkey, bound for Sweden and reunification with her sisters and parents. After a raid by the Turkish immigration authorities she is rescued by one of the smugglers who organized her escape. The seemingly mismatched duo begin their journey to freedom.

Exodus

Golden Bear at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival and of course banned in Iran, Mohammad Rasoulof's dynamite film, which inevitably led to the director's imprisonment, is a stormy political denunciation drama that seeks humanity in an inhuman country.

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Four stories with the death penalty as a common theme in contemporary Iran reveal the unrelenting moral dilemmas and the political and social deadlocks in a regime of intolerance.

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Golden Bear | Berlin Film Festival | 2020
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury | Berlin Film Festival | 2020

There is no Evil

Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival of 2018 and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film for Lebanese Nadine Labaki's neorealist drama that will not leave anyone unmoved.

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While serving a five-year sentence for a violent crime, a 12-year-old boy decides to make his own revolution against poverty and family hardships, in the suffocating and dead-end reality of modern Lebanon.

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Jury Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2018
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury | Cannes Film Festival | 2018
Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2019
Nominated for Best Motion Picture in a Foreign Language | Golden Globes | 2019
Audience Award | Sarajevo Film Festival | 2018
Audience Award | Rotterdam International Film Festival | 2011

Capernaum

An emotionally generous cinematic surprise from Israel about loss and desire, forged from simple and exquisite ingredients that make up a truly "hidden recipe" directed by Israeli Ofir Raul Graizer.

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After the death of his married lover in a car accident, a German confectioner visits Jerusalem to learn more about his partner's past. Under a hidden identity he will meet his lover's wife and propose to her a business partnership, sparking a series of revelations.

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Award of the Ecumenical Jury | Karlovy Vary International Film Festival | 2017
Official Selection | London Film Festival | 2017
Official Selection | San Sebastián International Film Festival | 2017

The Cakemaker

Based on real events, this film admirably walks the line between its political perspective and the tropes of the mystery genre. Solid and well-written characters, excellent performances and a must-see movie for fans of whodunits.

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A few weeks before the Egyptian Revolution, an officer in the corrupt Cairo police force is investigating the death of a young singer. What initially seems like a crime of passion has much deeper implications that reach all the way up to the country's power elite. The high-ranking police officer will break the rules in the name of justice, clashing with the status quo and his own belief system.

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Grand Jury Prize | Sundance Film Festival | 2017

The Nile Hilton Incident

Kiarostami's fame crossed Iran's borders long ago, and his first film in the West was a wonderful story that drew inspiration from this aesthetic "moving". A lesson of adaptation to new conditions without altering the characteristics of the great director.

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When a British writer arrives in Tuscany to present his book and give a lecture, an art lover seeking for a meaningful conversation with him, decides to give him her phone number with the hope of meeting up with him later. Although their first meeting is awkward, gradually, the discussion progresses from formal to more personal. The atmosphere becomes more intimate and their relationship more affectionate. Have they met before?

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2010
Best Actress (Juliette Binoche) | Cannes Film Festival | 2010

Certified Copy

Does History repeat itself as a tragedy or as a farce? In Houman Seyyedi's shocking film, which won two prizes at the Venice Film Festival, the shocking climax and the unrepeatable final scene provide the answer.

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A poor and homeless laborer is hired to build the sets for a film about Hitler's atrocities during World War II. Unexpectedly, he will be given a role, but then his life will be derailed with irreparable consequences.

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Orizzonti Best Film Award | Venice Film Festival | 2022
Special Jury Prize | Tokyo Film Festival | 2022

World War III

Un Certain Regard Best Screenplay Award in Cannes Film Festival, for Meryem Benm'Barek-Aloïsi’s apocalyptic film, that dares to talk about class and racial inequalities in today’s moroccan society.

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A twenty-year-old woman gives birth to a child out of wedlock in modern-day Morocco, and now has twenty-four hours to report the father to the authorities in order to avoid punishment.

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Best Screenplay - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2018
FIPRESCI Award | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2018

Sofia

In one of the most original directorial debuts in recent years, the Egyptian Omar El Zohairy surreally dissects the situation in his country, through an imaginative allegory. Cannes Critics' Week Grand Prize and Minority Production Iris Award by the Hellenic Film Academy.

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When a magic trick goes wrong at a children's party, the strict father of the family is transformed into a chicken. An avalanche of strange coincidences drags everyone down. The mother, who lived a monotonous life devoted to her husband and children, is forced to be on the front line and take care of the family.

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Grand Prize | Critic's Week | 2021
FIPRESCI Prize | Critic's Week | 2021

Feathers

An exquisite specimen of cinema that expresses social and moral dilemmas through the Irani cinematic perspective and tradition. An elegy to the people we dreamt we would become but have buried deep inside instead. With awards at the Venice and Thessaloniki International Film Festivals.

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A respectable medical examiner is involved in a car accident where an 8 year-old boy is injured. The man tries to reimburse the boy’s father and transport the child to the hospital, but to no avail. The next morning in the hospital, he encounters the body of the boy that had been sent there for an autopsy. The first ruling, however, indicates death by poison.

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Best Director - Orizzonti | Venice Film Festival | 2017 
Best Actor (Navid Mohammadzadeh) - Orizzonti | Venice Film Festival | 2017
FIPRESCI Prize | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2017
Special Jury Award | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2017

No Date, No Signature

Combining the epic dimensions of a myth with the hallucinatory atmosphere of a dream, Iranian Bahram Beyzaie's film, banned for decades, is a visually sublime masterpiece that invents its own parable to critique the socio-political conditions of the country in the 1970s.

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A young man arrives unconscious in a canoe on the shore of the Persian Gulf. After recovering, he claims he doesn't remember who he is. He falls in love with a beautiful peasant girl and gets married. After years of peace, strangers come from the sea looking for him and attack the village.

Stranger and the Fog

The winner of the ‘’Un Certain Regard’’ award at the 2017 Cannes Festival, the film that brought Rasoulof into the spotlight is yet another testament to the power of Iranian cinema to overcome the domestic censorship and provide a commentary on corruption in a seemingly theocratic state.

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A 35 year-old man moves his family from Tehran to the countryside in order to escape the corruption of the establishment. He will soon realize that the decay has seeped into the bones of his entire country.

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Un Certain Regard Award | Cannes Film Festival | 2017
Best Screenplay | Chicago International Film Festival | 2017

A Man of Integrity

Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for the movie that made the Iranian Asghar Farhadi internationally famous and reflected the painful process of a divorce as a race of self-determination and survival in an authoritarian and fundamentalistic state.

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A man is bound by his sick father and does not want to abandon him. His wife leaves him and their daughter, hoping her mother will soon come back, stays with him temporarily. Unable to take care of his old father alone, he hires a woman to take care of him. What he doesn't know is that this woman works without her husband's permission while being pregnant. Without realizing it, he's captured in a web of lies and social disputes.

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Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2012
Golden Bear | Berlin International Film Festival | 2011
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury | Berlin International Film Festival | 2011
Best Actress | Berlin International Film Festival | 2011
Best Actor | Berlin International Film Festival | 2011

A Separation

The first film shot in Saudi Arabia was not only directed by a woman, but it focuses on something unthinkable: a girl who wants to have a bike. It’s realist, humane, disarming and even revolutionary.

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A determined 12-year-old girl lives in the capital of Saudi Arabia. She's fallen in love with a green bike and she'll do anything to get it. She will have to face a lot of obstacles, the biggest of all being that in her country it is considered immoral for a girl to ride a bike.

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Interfilm Award | Venice Film Festival | 2012
C.I.C.A.E. Award | Venice Film Festival | 2012 
CinemAvvenire Award | Venice Film Festival | 2012

Wadjda

Forgotten for years and banned by the Islamic regime, this gem of the Iranian new wave reveals a hypnotically stylized mystery and period drama, combining Kubrick, Parajanov, Gothic horror and Persian tradition.

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After the death of his wife, a corrupt merchant plans to get rid of his stepdaughter and heir to the estate. The young girl, a modern and emancipated woman, asks her maid for help, unaware that the latter is a player on both sides.

Chess of the Wind

Stormy political thriller from the director of the audience favourite, The Nile Hilton Incident, in a style reminiscent of the book The Name of the Rose. A mystery turns into a paranoid nightmare through a boldly anti-clerical screenplay that was awarded at Cannes.

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Adam wins a place at Al-Azhar University, the center of power in Sunni Islam. Shortly after arriving in Cairo, the university's religious leader - the Grand Imam - collapses and dies in front of his students. This event marks the beginning of a battle for his position, while Adam soon becomes a pawn in the ruthless supremacy struggle between Egypt's religious and political elite.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2022
Best Screenplay | Cannes Film Festival | 2022

Boy from Heaven

Life and art merge in a wonderful recording of a love story on and off-camera, a rare parallel and two-fold approach to the concept of erotic desire that survives in the wreckage of an earthquake-stricken region.

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The relationship between Abbas Kiarostami and his actors during the filming of his previous film "And Life Goes On", focusing on the film's newly married couple and the actor's attempt to actually marry his co-worker.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 1994
Silver Hugo Best Film | Chicago International Film Festival | 1994
Critics Award | São Paulo International Film Festival | 1994

Through the Olive Trees

Filled with humour and tenderness, yet grounded in a clear political perspective, Laila Abbas' film is a bittersweet, tense, witty, and sharply critical exploration of female empowerment and the urgent need for change.

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Two sisters are confronted with the injustice of Islamic law when they are forced to share their father's property with their estranged brother.

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Official Selection - International Competition | London Film Festival | 2024
Best Director - Meet the Neighbours | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2024

Thank You for Banking with Us

Simplistically made and rich in content, Kiarostami's in-car digital experiment defies prohibitions and brings to the surface secrets and lies of the Iranian society, especially those related to the weak, in the eyes of the authorities, sex.

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Abbas Kiarostami delivers a visual social experiment in the form of dialogues between an Iranian female driver and the people she hosts in her car, a closed micrograph about the country's society.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2002

Ali Abbasi (Border) revisits the case of a 2001 serial killer, in a well-structured and suspenseful thriller, where every detail reveals the pressure and misogyny of the collective Iranian unconscious.

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Peaceful family man in the morning, hardened criminal at night: A serial killer roams the night streets of the holy city of Mashhad exterminating prostitutes, because this is how he thinks he is purifying the world of sinners. Until a fearless journalist decides to put her life in danger in order to expose him.

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Best Actress Award (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) | Cannes Film Festival | 2022

Holy Spider

The already classic adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel to the big screen by its creator, remains to this day a beautiful and timeless complaint about the oppression of women and the revolutionary need for creation and expression.

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A nine-year-old girl grows up with her progressive family in the late 70s Tehran, during the period of the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Islamic revolution’s religious fanaticism.

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Nomination for Best Animated Feature | Oscars | 2008
Jury Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2007
Best Adapted Screenplay | César Awards | 2008 
Best First Film | César Awards | 2008 
Audience Award | Rotterdam Film Festival | 2008

Persepolis

Another honest drama from the talented director Asghar Farhadi, awarded by the Academy with the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. A story so powerful that it touches your soul.

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A couple is forced to leave their Tehran apartment, which is falling to pieces, and move into another one. While working together on the production of the play "Death of a Salesman", their relationship begins to change.

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Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2017
Best Actor (Shahab Hosseini) | Cannes Film Festival | 2016
Best Screenplay | Cannes Film Festival | 2016

The Salesman

Love knows no age nor political conflicts in this unexpected romantic comedy from Palestine that embraces us from the very first moment with its sweet melancholy, tenderness and humour.

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Gaza, today. A 65-year-old fisherman, secretly in love with a melancholy widow, accidentally catches an ancient Greek statue of Apollo and his life takes an unexpectedly surreal turn.

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NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film | Toronto International Film Festival | 2020
Best Screenplay | Valladolid International Film Festival | 2020
Best Film | Valladolid International Film Festival | 2020

Gaza Mon Amour

Altman's "Short Cuts" meets Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis" and the aesthetic success of rotoscopic animation. The parallel love, escape and exploitation stories of three women in modern-day Tehran where sex and desire are still a taboo.

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In Tehran, a city full of social restrictions and religious laws, any crime is followed by harsh punishment. But the thirst for life makes people crave freedom. The lives of three women from different social backgrounds and a young musician will intersect in order to fight the system’s hypocrisy and contradictions.

Tehran Taboo

A journey with the purpose of suicide as an excuse for a film about our choice to live and our choices in life, awarded fairly with Palm d’Or as the culmination of a great filmography that set Iran on the world’s cinematic map.

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A middle-aged man has decided to commit suicide and is desperately looking for someone to help him by burying him under a certain cherry tree. Eventually he finds a taxidermist who, for his own reasons, tells him that he will help him.

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Palme d'Or | Cannes Film Festival | 1997