Filmographie

In the wake of her husband's death, headstrong widow Reyhan (Fereshtei Sadre Orafaei) longs to re-open his successful border cafe, despite rigid social standards that explicitly discourage her from doing so. Isolated from her friends and neighbours for her fervent efforts to resurrect the business, Reyhan also faces pressure from her conservative brother-in-law Nasser (Parviz Parastoei) who longs to take Reyhan as his second wife. Despite Nasser's vengeful efforts to break Reyhan's spirits and put her out of business, Reyhan's culinary skills soon begin drawing in a healthy clientele that includes kindly Greek trucker Zakariyo (Nikolas Padapopoulis), whose relationship with the determined restauranteur may provide an exit from her current crisis.

When an African dictator jails her husband, Shandurai goes into exile in Italy, studying medicine and keeping house for Mr. Kinsky, an eccentric English pianist and composer. She lives in one room of his Roman palazzo. He besieges her with flowers, gifts, and music, declaring passionately that he loves her, would go to Africa with her, would do anything for her. "What do you know of Africa?," she asks, then, in anguish, shouts, "Get my husband out of jail!" The rest of the film plays out the implications of this scene and leaves Shandurai with a choice.

Mina is recently divorced from her drug addict husband. With her mother deceased and estranged from her father, she leads an independent life. After finding a job in a restaurant she strikes up a friendship with its attentive manager. She starts having feelings she has never before experienced. These feelings, eventually shared, are shaken when the manager begins to distance himself from her. Thus commences a tumultuous emotional journey.

Jacob Störr, a sea captain, makes a bet in a café with a friend, to marry the first woman who enters the place. And in walks Lizzy.

Algeria, the 1930s. Younes is nine years old when he is put in his uncle's care in Oran. Rebaptized Jonas, he grows up among the Rio Salado youths, with whom he becomes friends. Emilie is one of the gang; everyone is in love with her. A great love story develops between Jonas and Emilie, which is soon unsettled by the conflicts troubling the country.

19-year-old Tomek whiles away his lonely life by spying on his opposite neighbour Magda through binoculars. She's an artist in her mid-thirties, and appears to have everything - not least a constant stream of men at her beck and call. But when the two finally meet, they discover that they have a lot more in common than appeared at first sight...

After 22 years, Aziz decides to return to his hometown, to sell some family possessions, including the house where he was born. But for his astonishment, the place is now a small restaurant, run by four women, one of them a girl whom he once dated. Attieh, the girl, tries to convince him not to sell the place by, instead of telling him a story a day as Sheherazade, cooking him a delicious dish every day.

A Tehran mullah-in-training struggles to take care of his ailing wife and their children in this profoundly moving melodrama. A film of near-universal appeal, it puts a human face on Iran's Muslim clergy with its unusual tale of a man forced by hardship to become a better husband and father. Seyed Reza has just moved with his family to Tehran so he can study the Koran, and he relies on his lovely wife Zahra to look after their two young children and weave the intricate rugs that earn them a living. But one evening Zahra collapses and is taken to the hospital, where she's diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Scarcely able to process the tragedy, Seyed is left to cook, change diapers, walk his daughter to school and take his toddler son with him to his classes, where peers and elders treat him with scorn. But Seyed eventually learns to cope, his prayers and devotional studies taking on deeper meaning as he attends to the hard nightly work of rug weaving, getting through with a heavy assist from friends, neighbors and kind strangers.

'Deep Breath' is an Iranian urban slacker movie that follows the meanderings and random vandalism of two listless and alienated twenty-somethings from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Kamran, a college student, and Mansour, a petty thief, are from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Cool and carefree, they steal cars, snatch cell phones, smoke joints and drive aimlessly. When the boys pick up a hitchhiker, a chatty student named Ayda, her dynamic presence begins to rouse them from their terminal ennui. Punctuated with beautiful imagery and comic moments, Shahbazi paints a sympathetic yet unsparing picture of disaffected Iranian youth. Wry and bittersweet, Deep Breath is not to be missed. The film was shown at the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival to great success. Among other accolades it won a FIPRESCI award at Pusan and the Jury special award at Turin as well as the Best Film award at the Belgrade Author Festival.

Bita is a successful lawyer and her specialty is women's rights. A curious case is brought to her that changes lives of everybody involved.

A young university professor, who leads a quiet and reclusive life and fills his life with reading and teaching literature, meet a young girl who has altered the course of her life for the sake of a man she loves. She has promised to meet her beloved at a certain spot on four consecutive nights exactly one year after their last meeting. The young professor's encounter with the young and passionate girl during four nights brings about significant changes in both of their lives and beliefs. Now concepts like love, literature and expection have a new meaning for them.

Malèna is about the peril of a beauty through the eyes of a 12 year old kid named Renato. He experiences three things on the same day, beginning of war, getting a bike and sees the arrival of Malèna in town. Through his eyes, we see the curse of beauty and loneliness of Malena, whose husband is presumed to be dead, and through his soul we see his love for her.

In their tenth anniversary, Amir and Shirin intend to emigrate from Iran. In the heat of the presidential election, they face immigration problems. There is just one solution left: Shirin accepts the help of their old university professor, Kamran Sabouhi, and goes to him to make the visa arrangements in Dubai. Despite his initial disapproval due to Sabouhi's affection to Shirin, Amir agrees to the plan eventually and Shirin leaves just one month away from the election. In the post election events, everything gets more complicated: Amir's sister, Aida, is arrested and his old love, Nazli, comes back to him after ten years...

Pari is a student of literature at a university in Tehran. Strong-willed and capable, she nevertheless frequently displays outward aggression towards the people in her life, jeopardizing her relationship with her tutor, her fiance, and her brother. Projecting her inner struggle onto others is, however, having a detrimental effect on Pari's mental health. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, Pari stumbles upon an old sufi book titled 'Solook', and with it resolves to change where her life is heading. Assisted by her brother, she sets about repairing the damage and discovering the person she is meant to be.

A member of Parliament (Irons) falls passionately in love with his son's fiancée. They pursue their affair with obsessive abandon despite the dangers of discovery and what it would do to his complacent life and his son. Completely obsessed, he wants to give up his current lifestyle to be with her. She has no intention of allowing him to do this, preferring to have her marriage to the son as a cover. They are eventually discovered, and must deal with the damage. Based on the novel by Josephine Hart.

While looking for an apartment, Jeanne, a beautiful young Parisienne, encounters Paul, a mysterious American expatriate mourning his wife's recent suicide. Instantly drawn to each other, they have a stormy, passionate affair, in which they do not reveal their names to each other. Their relationship deeply affects their lives, as Paul struggles with his wife's death and Jeanne prepares to marry her fiance, Tom, a film director making a cinema-verite documentary about her.

A woman comes back from Paris to her country after a long time. She meets a man that she hardly knows, but he knows a lot about her life.

Mahmoud (Homayoun Ershadi) is a successful writer and intellectual who retreats to his family's rural estate in order to overcome a severe case of writer's block. While there, he begins to contemplate his life, comparing it to a pear tree in the yard which has stopped producing fruit. From there, the film chronicles Mahmoud's memories of the past, including his love towards his adolescent cousin and his fervent hopes for the future. A searching examination of the Iranian middle class, as well as a touching insight into the frustration and ambition of a man trying to hold onto the dreams of days gone by, 'The Pear Tree' also marks the debut of internationally acclaimed actress Golshifteh Farahani.