Documentary
The Other Side of Burka is a 2004 Iranian documentary directed by Mehrdad Oskouei. In the southern island of Qeshm, Iran, which is a very strict region in point of tradition and African-Arabic rules, all women are under the pressure of patriarch society. Their sufferance is…

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AMERICAN COUP tells the story of the first coup ever carried out by the CIA - Iran, 1953. Explores the blowback from this seminal event, as well as the coup's lingering effects on the present US-Iranian relationship. Includes a segment on the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis and its relation to the 1953 coup. Concludes with a section on the recent Iranian presidential election. Contains interviews with noted Middle East experts and historians and prominent public figures such as Stephen Kinzer (author, All The Shah's Men), Prof. Ervand Abrahamian, Trita Parsi, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Ted Koppel and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. With Iranian cinematography by James Longley.

When Tehran hosts visiting foreign dignitaries, the local authorities clean up the city’s urban image through the controversial process of ‘urban beautification’. Those who are deemed unsavoury are rounded up – drug users, prostitutes and the homeless who sleep in cardboard boxes on sidewalks and who they would rather remain unseen. When these very important people leave, the men are released but the women are kept as wards of the state. An animated documentary made using hand-crafted cardboard miniatures and the voices of women to tell their story, one that has been five years in the making. A story that shows how the face of a city can change, but what is underneath often does not.

Ashley Smith was a troubled 19-year-old when she choked herself to death at Ontario's Grand Valley Institution for Women. Her death made national headlines and led to a scathing report by Canada’s federal prison ombudsman. Incarceration for Ashley began at a youth detention centre in New Brunswick. Her crime: she had tossed crabapples at a mailman. Her one-month sentence stretched to almost four years, served in five provinces. With the prison videotapes and exclusive access to Smith’s parents, along with a fellow inmate, this documentary exposes a system that fails the many Ashley Smiths still incarcerated in Canadian institutions.

Nearly three years have passed since the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests in Iran. Many who took part in the 2022 (1401) demonstrations paid a heavy price: some were killed, many were permanently injured, others were sentenced to long prison terms, and many lost their jobs. Among the well-known figures who supported the protests was Taraneh Alidoosti, one of Iran’s most prominent film actresses. After she posted an unveiled photo of herself and later protested the execution of Mohsen Shekari, she was imprisoned. Following her release, she became ill and remained out of the public eye for some time. Alidoosti has also been banned from acting in cinema. For the first time, in the documentary Taraneh, produced by Pegah Ahangarani, Alidoosti speaks about her decision to join the protest movement after the killing of Mahsa Amini. She talks about the day she was arrested at home in front of her little daughter and about the loss of her skin due to an autoimmune disease.

Painter Zdzisław Beksiński, his wife Zofia and their son Tomasz, a well-known radio journalist and translator, were a typical and unconventional family, both at the same time. One of the father’s obsessions was filming himself and his family members. Using archival footage only, shot primarily by Zdzisław, as well many other materials, which have not been presented anywhere so far, the film tells a tragic story of the Beksińskis that has never ceased to fascinate Polish filmmakers.