Gracefully tells the story of a drag queen who had been performing on stage for decades before the revolution and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, he has been banned from any kind of performance. He lives on a farm and spends most of his time farming and he sometimes dances for elderly people at nurseries.

* World Online Premiere *
– Now available everywhere in the world
Online Screening from May 20 – May 27, 2020
Q&A with the director Mina Akbari on Sunday, May 24, at 12pm Pacific Time / 3pm Eastern Time / 7pm GMT / 11:30pm Tehran Time

Directed by: Mina Akbari
2018 / 70 mins
Persian with English Subtitles

Journalist Mina Akbari’s FORMERLY YOUTH SQUARE opens with a photograph of a group of 70 journalists taken about 20 years ago in Javanan Square. Of those, only six continue to work in their profession, including the filmmaker. Many emigrated after the 2009 unrest that followed allegedly rigged elections, a few were imprisoned, and others simply left the field. Akbari narrates the film and interviews many of the journalists from the shuttered Jame’e newspaper. They speak about repression and their professional histories, referring to the difficulties and pitfalls of their careers in Iran. Formerly Youth Square drew such a large audience because such sensitive topics are rarely discussed in public forums and because the filmmaker is herself a respected journalist.

A ROCKY-esque tale of determination and grit, PLATFORM follows three Iranian sisters as they compete to become international champions of Wushu, a Chinese martial art. The sisters’ thrilling underdog story explores not only their dedicated training but also their surprising place in society as they challenge traditional gender roles on the path to success.

(Special thanks to @venerafilms)

Fight Feast (Bazm-e Razm) is about the vicissitudinous story of Iranian music between 1979-1989, the years just after the revolution through the end of the Iran-Iraq war. The narrative of restrictions and obstacles told by musicians, composers, and state authorities. The confrontation between music and politics. The simultaneous narration of two stories: the story of young people who sacrificed their lives for their homeland, and the story of musicians who on one hand entered the battlefields by their own language and on the other hand kept Iranian music alive and thriving.

The Story of Boulevard is a documentary about Keshavarz Boulevard, one of Tehran’s important streets, The film is in effect a line-up of histories, events, and narratives of the place and it’s deep-rooted desires and contradictions waxing and waning, a course that makes Boulevard a collective belonging.

Davood Ashrafi is an independent filmmaker based in Tehran. A graduate of Cinema from the University of Art and a member of Khane Cinema. He worked for years in feature films as a camera assistant and is now a cinematographer. In his work, he is interested in the intersection between documentary and fiction film. His documentary The Story of Boulevard won the Art & Experience prize at the 11th Cinema Verite Festival and Best film with the focus of Tehran at Shahr 7th International Film Festival.

The Mannequins of Ghale Hassan Khan tells the story of the birth and life of some mannequins. They are all created in the same way but their faith is not the same.

Sam Kalantari, bornin 1976 in Tehran, is considered to be the fourth generation of Iranian documentary filmmakers. He began filmmaking academically the same time as he entered university to study civil engineering, he entered the realm of Iran’s professional filmmaking scene by making his first short film “The Unknown Desire” (Tamanaye Majhoul) in 2001. After completing his studies in Ireland, he entered the international realm of Iranian cinema as the director of films “from the House No.37” and “He”.

“Homework” is a documentary Abbas Kiarostami directed in 1989 after realizing he was having difficulties assisting his son with his homework. Kiarostami interviewed young male students at a local school to find out what kind of problems kids faced completing their homework, which in Iran requires a great deal of parental assistance (or did at the time).

Official Selection, Hot Docs Film Festival
Official Selection, New Horizons Film Festival

Inside this traditional Iranian dating agency, the manager, Mrs. Sadri, and her female employees are determined to find their clients a husband — regardless of their personal feelings or preferences.

Shuffling through files and making agitated phone calls, they constantly remind their mortified customers that it’s the man who gets to choose and that a woman without a spouse doesn’t have an identity. Even a temporary marriage would be better than remaining unwed, they say. Which doesn’t mean these surprising brokers don’t harshly lecture their male clients as well, or that their conservative views don’t come with a good dose of humor — especially since two of them are, ironically, single.

Shot almost entirely inside the confines of their tiny office, The Broker conveys a sense of claustrophobia that mirrors many women’s situations and offers a shocking, tragicomic reminder that the fiercest agents of the patriarchy aren’t always men.

Iran’s entry for the international feature film category
in the 92nd Academy Awards (the Oscars) in 2020.

“Finding Farideh” is a feature-length documentary about an Iranian girl named Farideh, who had been abandoned in a holy shrine in Iran when she was 6 months old in 1976, and then she got adopted by a Dutch couple and left Iran to the Netherlands to start her new life. Her parents promised to take her to Iran when she turns 18, but it never happened because they always thought that Iran is a dangerous country to go. Now, she overcomes her fears and starts a personal journey to her motherland Iran for the first time to meet three families who claim to be her biological family and to find out about her Iranian identity and culture.

Festivals:

• Cinema Verite International Film Festival, Iran
• Fadjr International Film Festival, Iran
• Iranian Film festival in Cologne, Germany
• Prague Iranian Film Festival, Czech Republic
• Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, USA
• Docudays UA International film festival, Ukraine
• Zurich Iranian Film Festival, Switzerland
• Middle East Now Film Festival, Italy
• Istanbul International Film Festival, Turkey
• Kazan International Muslim Film Festival, Russia

Awards:

• Winner of the Special Prize of the Tataristan’s President for “Humanity in Cinema” at Kazan International Muslim Film Festival, Russia
• Winner of 4 awards in Iran’s international documentary film festival “Cinema Verite” : (Best Film in Art & Experience Section, Best Editing, Best Music and Festival director’s special prize).
• Winner of the best documentary award at the 20th Iran’s Cinema Celebration Academy Awards.
• Winner of an honorary diploma for best directing and the award for best sound design in the 10th Independent Celebration of Iranian Documentary Films.
• Winner of the best documentary film in the 1st “Cinema Cinema Academy Awards”

Inspired by an ancient Hormoz Island myth in which people sacrifice clothes of the deceased to the sea so that the goddess Sea-Mother will cleanse their souls, Janbal takes stories told by the island’s dwellers as its starting point and playfully finds its form from there.

Musa is enchanted by the sounds of the sea. He collects clothes from its shore to create pictorial visions of the Sea-Daughter; he plays the jahleh (clay pot) to keep alive the sound of her voice; he writes stories.

Directed by celebrated video and performance duo Mina Bozorgmehr and Hadi Kamali Moghadam, Janbal takes cinematic storytelling to realms rarely explored, blurring the real and the imaginative in a richly textured and poetic form that is inventive, rhythmic, and visually out-of-this-world.

Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of Iran’s powerful former president, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani,​ is the most news-making woman in the Islamic republic’s history. At first, she was only known as the daughter of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, but with her stands on women’s right and more important Baha’i rights in Iran, she became an independent character and turned into one of the influential individuals in politics in Iran. Like A Woman is the first and only documentary about Faezeh’s personal and private life with a look at her family in which will cover many unseen aspects of particularly Ayatollah Hashemi’s family and his controversial children.