International film festivals celebrate contemporary Iranian cinema as one of the most interesting and fascinating cinemas worldwide. Because of their high artistic quality and their passionate humanism Iranian movies have won more than 300 awards in the past decade.

Iranian Cinema:

The Cow (1974) Director: Dariush Mehrjui

Masht Hassan owns the only cow in a remote and desolate village. He treats the cow as his own child. When he is away, his cow dies. Knowing the relationship between Masht Hassan and his cow, the villagers hastily dispose the corpse, and when Masht Hassan comes back, they tell him that his cow ran away. Masht Hassan is devastated, he starts to spend all his time in the barn, eating hay, and slowly believes that he is the cow. -------------------------------------------------------------- Bashu the little Stranger (1986)

Director: Bahram Bayzai

This touching, thought-provoking Iranian children's drama, from 1989 has a simple story, but complex undertones as it is simultaneously a quiet plea for peace and tolerance, an entertaining story and a sly, metaphorical criticism of Moslem fundamentalist thinking. It also presents a view of Iranian rural life seldom seen by Westerners _______________________

Close Up (1990)

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

In this 1990 masterpiece of ironic reflexivity, Kiarostami's clear, self-possessed vision reveals the dogma of others while conveying none of its own, besides a faith in the power of the cinema itself to expose the artifice on which it depends. If religion is the suppression of the evidence of the eye through the dictate of the word, such calmly unwavering images, with their wry humor and generous sympathy, have the force of a quiet, steadfast resistance.

---------------------------------------------------------- Once Upon a Time Cinema (1992)

Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Makhmalbaf's tenth feature and first comedy is set during the Qajar dynasty. It tells the story of the cinematographer who introduces the magic of the movies of the Persian court. The Shah, who has 84 wives and 200 children, is initially opposed to the new medium, but after a screening he falls desperately in love with the film's heroine.

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Two Women (1998)

Director: Tahmineh Milani

Country girl Fereshteh and city girl Roya, schoolmates at Tehran University in the early '80s, become fri ends when the former tutors the latter to pay her way through architectural school. Their friendship and innocent fun are clouded only by the presence of a young man who stalks the pretty Fereshteh, demanding she marry him. She br ushes him off and the girls feel strong enough to disregard his advances, until one day he throws a bottle of acid at Fereshteh's cousin, mistaking him for her boyfriend. Blaming her for brining disgrace onto the family, Fereshteh's father forces her to return home from university, which has been closed due to the turmoil following the Islamic revolution anyway.

---------------------------------------------------------- The Silence (1998)

Director:Mohsen Makhmalbaf

From one of Iran's most celebrated filmmakers, comes The Silence, a hypnotic symphony of visual and aural rhythms. The Silence follows the life of Khorshid, a blind 10-year old boy who experiences the world through sound. Living with his mother in a small village in Tajikistan, Khorshid earns money tuning musical instruments.

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The taste of Cherry (1998)

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

WInner of the top prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, Taste of Cherry is an existential fable of weight and clarity from director Abbas Kiarostami. An Iranian man, Mr. Badii, is determined to commit suicide at nightfall, but seeks a living assistant to check his hand-dug grave the following morning. If Badii is dead, the person will fill the grave with dirt; if not, he will help Badii out of the hole -in either event receiving a handsome reward for the task. Badii scours the hills outside Tehran in his Range Rover, explaining the proposition to his passengers one by one. The candidates -- among them a soldier, a seminarian and taxidermist -- react differently to Badi's strange, forbidden request. Each lends new perspective on what it is that makes life worth living. ---------------------------------------------------------- Children of Heaven (1999)

Director:Majid Majidi

Majid Majidi celebrates the immediacy and essence of childhood in this delightful tale of a brother and sister who share a pair of shoes when the boy (though no fault of his own) loses his sister's only pair. Since their parents are too poor to afford a new pair, they keep it a secret, trading them off every day in a mad rush, jumping gutters and navigating the twisting lanes to their schools and back. Then the boy hatches a plan: the third-place prize in a student footrace is a new pair of shoes, and he's determined to take it. The plot may smack of a Disney film, but the direction couldn't be more different. The family scenes are delicately observed, and Majidi captures the spirit of the children perfectly: proud, emotional, petulant, sweet, and disarmingly sincere. The film has a Western-friendly framework without losing the naturalistic eye and lolling rhythm that gives the best Iranian films their richness. Even as he builds to the climactic footrace (quite unexpectedly turned into a nail-biting contest) the film continues to reveal a wealth of discreet surprises, culminating in a conclusion all the more resonant for its sublime delicacy. His efforts earned the film the honor of becoming the first Iranian feature to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film.

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The Circle (2000)

Director: Jafar Panahi

Anonymous women on the streets of Tehran crouch alongside cars to avoid police, dart down alleys, and flee from dangerous places with black chadors held over their heads, as if flying under dark wings. At first, we may be puzzled by the frenetic rushing about-the women, seen one or two at a time, don't seem to have any clear goal. But after a while, we realize that this is exactly the point. They have either spent time in prison or are heading straight there, and they are looking for a place to hide in a society in which single women have no more than provisional legitimacy as citizens. The director, Jafar Panahi, offers echoes of the Italian neorealist cinema in the general forlornness and pained humanism of his approach, but he's created aesthetic strategies all his own. Despite a longueur here and there, the cumulative power of "The Circle" is extraordinary. -------------------------------------------- Crimson Gold (2001)

Director: Jafar Panahi

For Hussein, a pizza delivery driver, the imbalance of the social system is thrown in his face wherever he turns. One day when his friend, Ali, shows him the contents of a lost purse, Hussein discovers a receipt of payment and cannot believe the large sum of money someone spent to purchase an expensive necklace. He knows that his pitiful salary will never be enough to afford such luxury. Hussein receives yet another blow when he and Ali are denied entry to an uptown jewelry store because of their appearance. His job allows him a full view of the contrast between rich and poor. He motorbikes every evening to neighborhoods he will never live in, for a closer look at what goes on behind closed doors. But one night, Hussein tastes the luxurious life, before his deep feelings of humiliation push him over the edge.

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Women's Prison (2002)

Director: Manijeh Hekmat

Banned in Iran, this taboo-breaking film uses the claustrophobic life of women behind bars as a metaphor for Iranian society since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Mitra, in prison for killing her violent stepfather, confronts new warden Tahereh on the eve of a riot, fearlessly challenging her dogmatic views - which, over time, began to change.

---------------------------------------------------------- Ten (2002)

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

In this revelatory film, Kiarostami reverses course and fixes his camera to the dashboard of a car driven by an unnamed, beautiful divorcée (Mania Akbari), as she navigates the streets of Tehran. (The camera faces inward.) It's a postmodern gesture, a movie seemingly without a director, a drama that's also a documentary. The streets are real, but the conversations are scripted. The talk centers on the corseted lives of women in modern Iran and the cross-cultural similarities can be striking: take away the headscarves and these women could be Connecticut housewives. There are many piercing moments, and Kiarostami's minimalist methods enhance a palpable sense of lives choked with frustration. Ironically, for a film about hidden women, the natural performance by Amin (Amin Maher), the ten-year-old son of the divorcée, reveals the most about their situation. He rants and whines, directing precocious, cutting insults at his mother, unaware of the punches he's landing

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Turtles Can Fly (2004)

Director: Bahman Ghobadi

Set in Ghobadi's native Kurdistan, close to the Turkey-Iran border. Soran is a 13-year-old boy who orders other children around as he installs an antenna for villagers keen to hear of Saddam's fall. Eventually, he falls for Agrin but is disturbed by her brother Henkov, who was left armless after he stepped on a landmine and who can now seemingly predict the future.

---------------------------------------------------------- Offside (2006)

Director: Jafar Panahi

Who is that strange boy sitting quietly in the corner of a bus full of screaming fans going to the football match? In fact, this shy boy is a girl in disguise. She is not alone; women also love football in Iran. Before the game begins, she is arrested at the checkpoint and put into a holding pen by the stadium with a band of other women all dressed up as men. They will be handed over to the vice squad after the match. But before this, they will be tortured -- they must endure every cheer, every shout of a game they cannot see. Worse yet, they must listen to the play-by-play account of a soldier who knows nothing about football. Yet, these young girls just won't give up. They use every trick in the book to see the match.