Mohsen Makhmalbaf

This is a film about the making of Salaam Cinema by Mohsen Makhmalbaf in Tehran and it’s eventual screening in Cannes Film Festival. Viewers are introduced to the personal and professional sides of Makhmalbaf and also to the uncontrollable passion for the cinema, held by the Iranian youth.

This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.

A semi-autobiographical account of an incident in Makhmalbaf's life when, as a 17-year-old, he stabbed a policeman at a protest rally. Two decades later, he tracks down the policeman he injured in an attempt to make amends.

Makhmalbaf puts an advertisement in the papers calling for an open casting for his next movie. However when hundreds of people show up, he decides to make a movie about the casting and the screen tests of the would-be actors.

Director Mohsen Makhmalbaf claims to have never seen a movie before making his first film. Doubtful as it sounds, this boast matches perfectly with the controversial artist's personae. Stardust Stricken -- Mohsen Makhmalbaf: A Portrait documents the work of this Iranian filmmaker. After spending time in prison for political dissidence, Makhmalbaf discovered the social potential of the cinema. Some of his projects include Marriage of the Blessed and The Actor. While creating around 20 films, the outspoken director established new ideas about the nature of his work. In this release, Makhmalbaf speaks about art, human behavior, and his evolving fundamentalist beliefs.

At his cinema in Rome, the Nuovo Sacher, Nanni Moretti anxiously oversees preparations for the premiere of the film Close-up, by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Meanwhile Disney's The Lion King is taking Italy by storm.

A group of friends embark on a magical journey through amazing nature to meet a poet who has spent a lifetime in prison for his poems. It’s a journey where reality and imagination merge…

Hossain Sabzian and some of his associates discuss his character, his life-long obsession with cinema and his attitude towards the film he starred in, "Close-Up" (1990).

Talking with Rivers is a conversation between Iran and Afghanistan, two neighbouring countries that used to be one land. The two countries are now sharing their stories after they parted from each other, from the era of Soviet invasion to the civil war and the Taliban era, up to and including the rise and fall of America and the return of the Taliban.

An anthology directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Testing Democracy) and Dariush Mehrjui (Dear Cousin is Lost)

Documentary showing the life of children of the Afghan villages bordering Iran, and how their life and culture were affected by Taliban regime.

On May 18, 2017, the Busan International Film Festival’s Program Director Kim Jiseok died suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart attack while on a business trip to the Cannes Film Festival. In the face of his unexpected demise, his old friends and colleagues in the film industry recall what tormented him in his last days.

Documentary showing the backstage of production of Samira Makhmalbaf's film Panj É Asr(At Five in the Afternoon), in Kabul, after the fall of the Taliban regime. Everything was recorded with a small digital camera by Samira's 14-year-old sister Hana.

An Iranian filmmaker and his son travel to Haifa, Israel to investigate a religion that originated a hundred and seventy years ago. Youth from all over come to Haifa to join this religion, and those who serve in the gardens that surround the holy places develop peace-loving attitudes through their interactions with nature. The filmmaker shares with his son the idea that if the Iranian people had adopted a peaceful religion, Iran would not be preparing a nuclear attack on Israel, but the son believes that all religions tend to bring about destruction. As a result of these arguments, father and son separate from one another and pursue their own paths.

The film and camera of Maysam Mkhamlbaf, Samira's brother follows her like an invisible eye. From her first subconscious presence as an actor, when she was one months old and crying in her mothers arms, while acting in a feature movie made by his father up to her first conscious appearance as an 8 year old child actor in the movie Cyclist made by his father in Pakistan. From when Samira made her first movie Apple at 17 or when she goes to visit the two imprisoned girls in the movie "Apple" and when she is occupied with changing the professional actor of the movie "Blackboard" with a non-professional actor (ordinary people) and even when she was attending the Cannes Film Festival in the years 1998 and 2000.

Alain de Botton, Edgar Morin, Fredric Jameson, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Orhan Pamuk converse with Brazilian thinkers and artists, creating a dialogue based on their theories and constructing a reflection on identity in the contemporary world.

Tracing the history and influence of Iranian cinema and its filmmakers.

Today Iranian cinema is one of the most highly regarded national cinemas in the world, regularly winning festival awards and critical acclaim for films which combine remarkable artistry and social relevance. Iran: A Cinematographic Revolution traces the development of this film industry, which has always been closely intertwined with the country's tumultuous political history, from the decades-long reign of Reza Shah Pahlevi and his son, the rise of Khomeini and the birth of the Islamic Republic, the seizure by militants of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and the devastating war with Iraq.

Simin Daneshvar was an Iranian pioneering novelist who lived nearly for a century and under 3 different political regimes. She and her husband, (Jalal Al Ahamd) have been regarded as "Iranian Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre". But they had a very different fate. Simin's life is a mirror of what has happened to Iranian women throughout a century, from unveiling the hijab and playing important roles in society to imposing hijab and staying at home in the Islamic regime. This film looks at her life through the history of women's movement in Iran.

During the 1970s the Middle East was a battleground for the Cold War; liberal pro-Western forces battled with pro-Soviet Arab Nationalists and Baathists. But in 1979 a series of events – the Iranian Revolution, Egypt’s peace with Israel, the Mecca Mosque Siege, and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan – contributed to a radical change in the mind-set of the region and its leaders. It was the start of the meteoric rise of radical Islam.