The Documentary and Experimental Film Center

A review of the artistic and personal life of Masoud Kimiai and the analysis of five decades of filmmaking.

Mana is an eight-year-old girl whom Leila has adopted through an old woman because she could not have child. One day, Mana faints at school. Following medical investigations, they find out that she is HIV positive…

A film about a muslim guy and his sex drive.

Documentary about Babak Bayat (Persian: بابک بیات)(13 June 1946 – 26 November 2006). Babak Bayat was an Iranian songwriter and film score composer. He was repeatedly nominated for the Crystal Simorgh award in the field of the soundtrack at the Fajr Film Festival and received this award twice in 1991 and 1997.

Valiasr Street, seventeen kilometers long, connects the south of Tehran to the north and the Alborz mountain range. When this street was built, the parties decorated it with more than 60,000 plane saplings. But today, only about eight thousand plane trees are standing on this street.

Ten years after Abdolnabi is killed in the war, his father and his close friend Isa—who lost a leg in the war and now uses a prosthetic—decide, together with the villagers, to relocate his grave. Isa plans to go to the city with Abdolnabi’s father to buy a gravestone, but the village landlord refuses to let him leave his duties as the village shepherd, especially because some buyers are expected to arrive from the city to purchase sheep. Despite the landlord’s objections, Isa goes to the city, and the landlord dismisses him from his job as shepherd. When the villagers begin exhuming Abdolnabi’s grave, they are astonished to discover that his body has remained intact and untouched. Meanwhile, after failing to find another shepherd, the landlord asks Isa to return to his job.

In Iran, gender-affirming surgery is legal, though it carries with it great stigma, and is usually performed so that a gay couple may lead a heteronormal life. In this one-of-a-kind film, shot in secret in Iran, a father and husband finds his fragile world endangered when a man from his past appears claiming to be his daughter's true father. He never knew his wife was pregnant when she sought a divorce, and now she's nowhere to be seen.

Luba is a young Russian woman who, after coming to Iran which coincides with the Iran-Iraq war, her Iranian husband went to the front and she has not heard from her husband for three years.

An excellent study of authoritarianism. It has two equally important qualities: one is a deep respect for the victims and their suffering; the other is the courage to face the autocrat and give him every possibility to present and defend himself. That the dictator demonstrates no need for defense and is thus denying any guilt and responsibility is probably the key feature of authoritarianism. The brilliance by which the filmmaker makes this gradually visible is breathtaking.

This documentary follows the life of an 80-year-old mother named Firouzeh who is fond of her isolated lifestyle in nature with her cows. The film shows her kind and loving character and demonstrates her bravery and strength tackling the hardship of life in the Alborz mountains without the modern comforts of technology. She believes happiness lies in the simplicities of life.

A young divorcee living with her son in a small northern city of Iran, wants to marry the man she has fallen in love with. According to the current rules, the father has the custody of children; however, her ex-husband has granted her that right on the condition that she doesn’t remarry. Struggling to keep both of her beloved ones, she has to think about the third option: Temporary Marriage (Sighe). However, this will get her into a predicament, as despite its being legal, Sighe is not well-received by the society at all. Would temporary marriage be a good solution for her?

A portrait documentary about one of the most prominent pioneers of the Iranian modern cinema, Sohrab Shahid Saless. In 1969, a young man of 26 years of age returns to his country Iran after years of studying cinema and going through the hardship of living abroad as a university student. He does not want to become a filmmaker in the commercial and valueless cinema of that time, so he chooses a different and – of course – a very hard path for the making of his films. The result of the daring choice is the two features A Simple Event and Still Life, which are remembered today as the most important and most influential first examples of the formation of the Iranian modern cinema. The pioneer filmmaker is nobody but Sohrab Shahid Saless. But how he succeeded in the making of the unconventional films? And how are his films related to the vicissitude in his life?

The Memory of NiAvaran is a documentary that examines the ancient times of Shemiranat village and Niavaran region, and besides the anthropological observation of the people of this region, it also pays special attention to the Niavaran palace complex. The events of Niavaran Palace and its capture during the Iranian revolution are also considered in this film.

The film tells the story of a reclusive taxi driver in Tehran in the days leading up to an earthquake. He has chosen to distance himself from society and to be passive so as not to be hurt. Finally one of his passengers gives him enough motivation to act and bring about a change in his life.

Sina, a sixteen years old teenager from today's Tehranian middle class, experiences a new life on the verge of his parents' divorce. Added to his very real sense of having been abandoned is the threat of a local thug who believes that Sina owes him a considerable sum of money. Things become even more complicated when Sina, taking advantage of his parents' constant absence, allows an older girl, Nahid, to temporarily move in with him. Sina finds himself with the prospect of making choices that threaten his body and soul.

The daily hardships of a war-scarred Bosnian village, where all that remains are widows and orphans, are painstakingly documented in this first feature from director Aida Begic. Snow offers insight about the psychological aftereffects of the 1992-95 civil war from a distinctively female point of view without showing any of the brutality or carnage.

Mehrollah is a 14-year-old boy who is forced to find a job to support his family after his father dies. He travels to the southern parts of Iran, looking for work. Upon his return to his hometown, he notices certain changes in his family.

In a small border town in Kurdistan, a schoolteacher whose life is closely intertwined with those of his students discovers that one of the children is working at a poultry shop against his wishes in order to support himself and meet a financial obligation. Seeking to address the problems faced by the school and its students, the teacher asks a wealthy man for help. Eventually, he tries to resolve their difficulties by selling his paintings to him.

Ibrahim and Ilma are siblings who take their flock of sheep to the mountains and during an accident, Ibrahim falls into a pit and Ilma is forced to take care of the flock.