Iran: A Country Shrouded in Mystery

Once we begin to consider certain people, items, or memories as our own, we lay ourselves open to the threat that we’ll lose them. Once the loss actually occurs, our mental image of the lost thing doesn’t disappear – on the contrary – it intensifies...

Video diary of a young Iranian actress addressed to a friend in exile. Recollections of the controversial presidential election followed by the most massive protests since the Islamic Revolution.

Born in Evin follows filmmaker and actress, Maryam Zaree, on her quest to find out the violent circumstances surrounding her birth inside one of the most notorious political prisons in the world.

The Basij are a paramilitary volunteer militia founded in Iran in 1979. Today, they are both an official and widely branching moral-religious movement and a civil police force with only the Quran as a law text...

Despite his blindness and old age, Mashti Esmail walks three hours every day to till his rice paddies. The open-hearted old man fills everybody around him, including his wives, with his friendly optimism. The portrayal of everyday reality is depicted with cinematographic sensitivity reminiscent of Still Life, a 40-year old classic of Iranian cinema.

A retrospective family history, set against the backdrop of the turbulent events in Iran in 1978. Using a mosaic-like collage of old photographs and archival footage, Bahman tells the story of an unrequited love that led him into the centre of the revolutionary events. In the end, his sacrifice personifies the thousands of young men who never returned home...

Brussels, behind the closed doors of a classroom. Using a textbook dating from the Islamic revolution, Sanaz Azari, the director, learns how to read and write in Persian, her mother tongue...