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…
Sixteen-year-old Nisha lives a double life. When out with her friends, she's a regular Norwegian teenager. At home with her family, she is the perfect Pakistani daughter. But when her father catches her alone with her boyfriend, her two worlds…
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.…
After making his Sundance award-winning documentary, Return to Homs , Talal Derki returned 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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Poignant, often witty and exceedingly cinematic, JELLYFISH tells the story of three very different Tel Aviv women whose intersecting stories weave an unlikely portrait of modern Israeli life.
Batya, a catering waitress, takes in a child apparently abandoned at a…
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…
Dr. Bassem Youssef made a decision that's every mother's worst nightmare - he left his job as a heart surgeon to become a full-time comedian.
Dubbed "The Egyptian Jon Stewart," Bassem creates the most viewed television program in the Middle…
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…
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…
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…
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. .…
In February 2002 - about a year before the U.S. invasion - Iraqi filmmaker Abbas Fahdel traveled home from France to capture everyday life as his country prepared for war. No strangers to war, the Iraqis thought they understood what…
Italian visual artist Yuri Ancarani's exquisite documentary enters the surreal world of wealthy Qatari sheikhs with a passion for amateur falconry. The opulence of this Middle Eastern gas state is on full display as the men race SUVs up and…
Three Palestinian women living in an apartment in Tel Aviv try to find a balance between traditional and modern culture.
Winner of a NETPAC Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Winner of Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress at…
