Silent Waters is set in 1979 in Pakistan, when General Zia-ul-Haq took control of the country and stoked the fires of Islamic nationalism. Ayesha, a Muslim woman who gets by on her late husband’s pension and by teaching young girls the Koran, invests her hopes in her beloved son Saleem. But when Saleem takes up with a group of Islamic fundamentalists just as a group of Sikh pilgrims come to town, Ayesha’s haunted past turns her present life upside...

In this lyrical and intimately nuanced story conceived by Abbas Kiarostami and starring Leila Hatami, a photographer and his young wife are stranded in a remote Iranian village after their car breaks down. The only adult inhabitant leaves with the photographer to find help, while the woman takes over the duties of teaching the village children - whose parents are nowhere to be found.

Renowned visual artist Shirin Neshat offers an exquisitely crafted view of women rights today in Iran as compared to Iran in 1953, when a British- and American-backed coup removed the democratically elected government. The film was adapted from the novel by Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur and weaves together the stories of four individual women during those traumatic days, whose experiences are shaped by their faith and the social structures in...

A beautiful young woman returns to war-torn Baghdad and has to confront a harsh reality and shattered dreams. Fatima is an intimate film that tackles how sensitive human being react to the ominous reality of war and destruction. Using a poetic approach, the film subtly brings the viewer into the psyche of the main character, a 26 year old woman who returns to Baghdad to reunite with her family and fiancee, and to follow her dream of becoming a childcare...

A Space Exodus quirkily sets up an adapted stretch of Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey in a Middle Eastern political context. The recognisable music scores of the 1968 science fiction film are changed to arabesque chords matching the surreal visuals of Sansour's film. The film follows the artist herself onto a phantasmagoric journey through the universe echoing Stanley Kubrick's thematic concerns for human evolution, progress and technology. However,...