Hooman Behmanesh

In the winter of 1988, in the depths of the Iraq/Iran war, the border town of Halabja was attacked by chemical weapons with all its people and their different stories.

At 40 years old, Leila has spent her whole life taking care of her parents and her four brothers. The family argues constantly and is crushed by debts, in a country caught in the grip of international economic sanctions. As her brothers are trying to make ends meet, Leila formulates a plan: to start a family business that would save them for poverty. While they are in desperate need of financial support, Leila finds out that their father Esmail has secretly been hiding a family heirloom. He had been saving it as an offering to become the new Patriarch of the clan, the highest honor in the Persian tradition. This uncovering will bring chaos to the already fragile family dynamics. As the father's health deteriorates, the actions of each family member will gradually lead the family one step closer to implosion.

The story of 12-year-old Ali and his three friends. Together they work hard to survive and support their families, doing small jobs in a garage and committing petty crimes to make fast money. In a turn of events that seems miraculous, Ali is entrusted to find hidden treasure underground. He recruits his gang, but first, to gain access to the tunnel, the children must enroll at the Sun School, a charitable institution that tries to educate street kids and child laborers, close to where the treasure is located.

Samad is nobody’s fool. The narcotics officer has seen his share of a drug dealer’s lies and games, and his patience has come to run thin. While searching for the infamous drug baron Nasser Khakzad, he and his colleague Hamid scour the streets of Tehran, turning an overcrowded prison on its head. With his rough and dubious approach, Samad finally manages to find the criminal’s whereabouts – but things do not quite go according to plan...

Mahtab and Ava are classmates in their second year of college studying engineering. The story begin when they and other classmates go on a trip to Esfahan.

A couple's son, Parham disappears in the babysitter's house. Complications arise as the babysitter claims Parham hasn't been to their house.

An orange Chevrolet Impala drives across a cemetery towards an abandoned shipwreck in the middle of a desert landscape. It is the 22nd of January, 1965. The day before, the Iranian prime minister was shot dead in front of the parliament building. Inside the wreck, a banished political prisoner has hung himself. The walls are covered in diary entries, literary quotes and strange symbols. Can they help Police Inspector Babak Hafizi in his investigations? Will they shed any light on why there is always an earthquake whenever somebody is buried in this desert cemetery?

Amir and Sara are a young couple on their way to Melbourne to continue their studies. However, just a few hours before the departure of their flight, they are unintentionally involved in a tragic event.

The fault lines in a marriage become evident when an out-of-town couple and their child arrive for a corporate trade show at a Tehran hotel. Accustomed to berating his pretty wife for her shy demeanor and her suburban manner, the husband is taken aback when she blooms under the attentions of a male colleague and is given a role in planning his company’s presentation. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

Based on a true story about Taliban in Afghanistan and how they tried to destroy their National film archive and closing the movie houses.

Six urban women reveal their family recipes in a film that, at first glance, may look like an introduction to local cuisine, but which turns into a surprising exploration of relationships in modern Iranian society.

Esmaeil Fallah and his wife Marziyeh, who is also his cousin and pregnant, are worried about their child and they go to a doctor. The doctor tells them that the child is blind, deaf and mute and it would be a torture to keep him...

A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.

A closed circuit camera for traffic control in Tehran reacts to the wanderings of a single woman on a high-way.