Directed by Farzad Khoshdast • 2018 • Iran
Behind the solid concrete walls of the women's prison Gharchak in Iran's capital, Tehran, four young women open the door to their lives and innermost thoughts. They reveal their downfall into substance abuse and violent crime, which led to a life behind bars. All four are sentenced to several years of imprisonment for assault and murder. Their children play on the grey stone floor in the prison, where the women's only contact to the outside world is through a pay phone. Violence, coercion, abuse and sexual assaults were the recurring reasons why the young women broke with the outside world's expectations of proper female behavior – and sacrificed their lives in the process. Farzad Khoshdast's paradoxically poetic 'A Woman Without a Name' is rich in both shades and contrasts. With the prison as a final destination and a symbolic backdrop, the film also addresses the structural causes for the young women's downfall – which in their own words was a desperate attempt to get away from a tough reality.
Directed by Kamran Heidari • 2017 • Iran
Seventy-year-old Ali Aqa’s large, fleshy hands shake as he helps a newborn pigeon chick hatch. His pigeons, which he keeps on the roof of his home, mean everything to him. He calls his favorite white pigeon “sweetheart” and even takes her into his bedroom....
Directed by Rakhshan Banietemad • 2015 • Iran
Mahlagha Mallah is Iran’s eldest environmental activist and the founder of the first environmental NGO in Iran. Spending a few days in her home and accompanying her in environmental gatherings and activities is an excuse to portray the critical state ...
Directed by Rakhshan Banietemad • 2009 • Iran
In the backstreets of one of the poor districts of Tehran, in a very small house, everyday hundreds of women spend a few hours in the shadows of a safe shelter. Women, whose share in life is only suffering and humiliation.
