Hundreds of thousands of cats roam the metropolis of Istanbul freely. For thousands of years they've wandered in and out of people's lives, becoming an essential part of the communities that make the city so rich.
Winner of Best First…
Strange things are afoot in Bad City. The Iranian ghost town, home to prostitutes, junkies, pimps, and other sordid souls, is a place that reeks of death and hopelessness, where a lonely vampire is stalking the towns most unsavory inhabitants.…
In this Oscar -nominated documentary, filmmaker Talal Derki traveled to Syria where he gained the trust of a radical Islamist family, sharing their daily life for over two years.
His camera focuses primarily on the children, providing an extremely rare…
Not too far from Timbuktu, now ruled by religious fundamentalists, Kidane lives peacefully in the dunes with his wife Satima, his daughter Tonya, and Issan, their shepherd. In town, the people suffer, powerless, from the regime of terror imposed by…
A gripping debut about a young girl's coming-of-age in a strict, traditional society. Living with her well-to-do parents in Tehran, Ava is a bright and focused teen whose concerns -- friendships, music, social status, academic performance -- resemble that of…
Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years, and CLOSE-UP is his most radical, brilliant work. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event--the arrest of a…
This groundbreaking documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today's biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Featuring acclaimed author Dr. Jack Shaheen, the film explores a long line of…
The story of a teacher who becomes at first enchanted, and then ultimately consumed by the poetic genius of her five-year-old student. As the titular protagonist, Nira, discovers that her young student, Yoav, has an otherworldly talent for language and…
An accident during a bar mitzvah celebration leads to a rift between the men and women in a devout community in Jerusalem in this rousing, good-hearted comedy. Awash with Jerusalem's distinctive glow, THE WOMEN'S BALCONY is a warm, poignant portrait…
Winner at the Sundance Film Festival , 5 BROKEN CAMERAS is a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought…
2018 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature, Syrian filmmaker Feras Fayyad's breathtaking work - a searing example of boots-on-the-ground reportage - follows the efforts of the internationally recognized White Helmets; ordinary citizens who are the first to rush towards…
A young Palestinian freedom fighter agrees to work as an informant after he's tricked into an admission of guilt by association in the wake of an Israeli soldier's killing.
Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. .…
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…
Deepa Kumar, a leading scholar on Islamophobia, argues that U.S. media have turned Arabs and Muslims into the new face of terror, even though only a tiny fraction of Muslims and Arabs have ever committed a terror attack, and terror…
The adhan is the Muslim call to prayer, an invitation to sacred space traditionally recited by a muezzin at a mosque five times each day. Cairo has thousands of mosques, and with countless muezzins chanting the call simultaneously there is…
Nominated for the 2016 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1916, while war rages in the Ottoman Empire, Hussein raises his younger brother Theeb ("Wolf") in a traditional Bedouin community that is isolated by the vast, unforgiving desert.…
A stark testimonial of the previously unseen and unheard, this documentary plunges us into the lives of young teenage girls sharing temporary quarters at a rehabilitation and correction center on the outskirts of Tehran. STARLESS DREAMS is an unforgettable cinematic…
Over the past few years, Israel's ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world -- except the United States. The Occupation of…
In this gorgeously animated drama, the lives of several strong-willed women and a young musician intersect. Their stories reveal the hypocrisies of modern Iranian society, where sex, drugs, and corruption coexist with strict religious law.
In the bustling metropolis of…
This Oscar -nominated drama follows five free-spirited sisters in a Turkish village. While playing innocent games with their friends, a neighbor passes by and reports what she considers to be illicit behavior to the girls' family. The family overreacts, removing…
