Shoja Azari

Simple Little Lives

Shoja Azari

Rosie Benton, Kieran Campion

Tradition still abides in the ADK - the Adirondacks region of upstate New York - as nine friends gather for their annual all-night hog roast even as their community crumbles around them. But the arrival of Carter, a slick rock 'n' roller from the City, will expose the simmering tensions within the group and ignite an age-old feud.

Turbulent

Shirin Neshat

Shoja Azari, Sussan Deyhim

On one wall, a singer delivers a passionate love song to a group of men. He is faced away from his audience, secure that his performance will be accepted and adored. On the opposite wall, a woman in a black chador stands silently throughout his song. Then something stunning happens…

K

Shoja Azari

Three stories. We see, but little is explained. In "The Married Couple," a salesman pays a call on an old customer who is with his wife in the upstairs bedroom of their ill adult son. Another salesman may beat him to the punch, but not before disorienting changes. A maid scrubs the floor. "In the Penal Colony": a man arrives at a penal colony where an officer demonstrates a bizarre apparatus, one that punches a message into the skin of a prisoner strapped beneath it. Who will be punished? In "Fratricide," a man is murdered at night by someone he knows well. A woman grieves.

Women Without Men

Shoja Azari, Shirin Neshat

Shabnam Toloui, Pegah Ferydoni

Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.

Looking for Oum Kulthum

Shoja Azari, Shirin Neshat

Neda Rahmanian, Yasmin Raeis

A film within a film, "Looking for Oum Kulthum" is the plight of an Iranian woman artist/filmmaker living in exile, as she embarks on capturing the life and art of the legendary female singer of the Arab world, Oum Kulthum. Through her difficult journey, not unlike her heroine's, she has to face the struggles, sacrifices and the price that a woman has to pay if she dares to cross the lines of a conservative male dominated society.

Land of Dreams

Shoja Azari, Shirin Neshat

Sheila Vand, Matt Dillon

Simin is an Iranian woman on a journey to discover what it means to be a free American. She works for the Census Bureau which, in an effort to control its citizens, has begun a program to record their dreams. Unaware of this devious plot, Simin is torn between her compassion for those whose dreams she is recording and a truth she must find within.