Deportees (2007)

House of Sand and Fog

Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.

Tales

Award-winning Iranian filmmaker Rakshan Banietemad ends her eight-year hiatus from feature filmmaking with this ingenious, mosaic-like narrative, which knits together the stories of seven characters to create a microcosm of Iranian working-class society.

The Willow Tree

Youssef, a blind university professor, is suddenly diagnosed with a fatal disease and must undergo treatment in France. Back home, will he find the life he had before?

Track 143

Olfat is raising her children in hardship. She has one daughter and one son called Yonos who works in Kerman copper mine. One day, she finds a note at home with this massage "My friends and I are going to enter the war as soldiers". After reading this note, Olfat and his friend's parents got worried about their sons. When operation Valfajr failed, they received news about Yonos's friend. Olfat is waiting for her son too. As she finds out that the Iraqi radio announces the Iranian captives' names, she ties a radio on her back and carries it everywhere.

Any Day Now

Bahman, Mahtab, Ramin and Donya Mehdipour are enjoying a perfect summer in a small Finnish town. Their routines are fractured by a negative decision on their application for asylum by the Finnish Immigration Service. But life must go on and the 13-year-old Ramin is about to enter an entirely new school, junior high. The Mehdipours use their last chance to appeal but continue their everyday lives, fuelled by their exceptionally positive outlook and attitude.

A Separation

A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.

A Minor Leap Down

Nahal is around thirty and in her fourth month of pregnancy. During a routine check-up she learns that her baby has died and she now faces a curettage abortion in two days’ time. When she tries to address the subject, neither her mother nor her husband give her a chance to speak.

Rhino Season

Kurdish-Iranian poet Sahel has just been released from a thirty-year prison sentence in Iran. Now the one thing keeping him going is the thought of finding his wife, who thinks he's been dead for over twenty years.

This Apple is for You

After finding out that her ex-fiancé has married her best-friend, Bita starts plotting a revenge against them.

Two Women

A sensation when released in 1999 in Iran, Two Women charts the lives of two promising architecture students over the course of the first turbulent years of the Islamic Republic. Tahimine Milani creates this scathing portrait of those traditions - aided by official indifference - which conspire to trap women and stop them from realizing their full potential; the inclusion of frank depictions of domestic violence was hailed by many as a breakthrough in dealing with a long taboo subject.

Naghshe Negar

Plot unavailable

Dowry's Sugar Bowl

Ata and Masoumeh are living in a rented house. Their lease time is over and they can not pay the rent added. But they like to stay and live in this house...

Time to Love

Bita (Hatami), a successful lawyer specializing in championing the cause of women’s rights in divorce cases, is blind to the trouble brewing in her own marriage. A snatch of gossip and a problem client with an unwanted pregnancy unexpectedly bring Bita’s problems home. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

Verdict

Sahand, Mohsen and Foroozande are attacking engineer Kazem's house on a rainy night and steal the house and injure him. They decide to flee Forouzande from Iran to another country. They go ...

Saint Petersburg

A newly released prisoner and an ostensibly rich youth become aware of the place of Tsar's long lost treasure by a twist of fate.

Princess of Rome

Princess of Rome, Mellika, granddaughter of Great Caesar. The story talks about her move from Byzantium in the 9th century, to avoid her marriage with Krytos, and brings her to Baghdad to become the mother of Imam Mahdi, the Savior.

The Bride

Hamid and Mahin are husband and wife and are traveling to the north by their car. But in the way they have an accident with a rural woman. Unlike his wife's disagreement Hamid decides to escape the scene and lives the woman to die but it is only the beginning of his troubles.

Jameh Daran

The depressed Shirin wanders around at her father's funeral. Unexpectedly, she sees a man very much like her father. Regardless of her uncle's objection, Shirin is enchanted by the idea of finding out that man. Reluctantly, her uncle acknowledges that the man is her father's illegitimate child. Looking at gloomy daughter, Shirin's mother tells her about some past events, especially about an unexpected truth that Shirin is her father's adopted daughter. It seems to be clear that Shirin and that man have no blood bond. But her father's mistress tells a different story.

Tambourine

Mohammad is sent to an apartment situated in uptown Tehran to install their satellite dishes, while having satellite TV is illegal in Iran. He arrives there with a girl named Shirin who seems to be his girlfriend and is in need of some money to repair her father's car with which she has had an accident the day before. Each of the house's residents have their own fish to fry and they also want their satellites installed as soon as possible.

Modest Reception

An Iranian couple from the city drive around a remote mountainous region. They hand out bags of money to poor villagers in return for them carrying out unusual requests the couple make of them.

The Corridor

Behzad, who has been in prison for manslaughter for a long time, has a son who does not know about him. When he is introduced, the son goes through a conflict. Then, as a family, they go to the victim's family seeking consent so Reza would be released.

Ice Flower

Plot unavailable

The Guest

A young taxi driver who is a happy man encounters lots of different stories through his daily life. One day, he is driving a young American woman and he enters an unusual and protracted adventure which he should follow to the end. The American woman has lost the address she is going to refer and it is almost impossible to reach her relatives. The young driver believes that he should help the woman until she finds her relatives and this issue causes many problems between him and his fiancee. He also has other problems regarding the American woman and his unusual friend.

Nargess

A sharp-edged look at people who live outside the constraints of Islamic law.

Here Without Me

The story is about the world of a small family with familiar dreams and not so remarkable problems. The mother is trying to lead everything to save her family, but small events disarrange all her plans.

Lovers Die Standing

Reza is a freelance journalist who accidentally finds clues from Hiwa, an Iraqi soldier who saved Reza years ago in the harsh conditions of war. He leaves for Iraq to answer the issues he has been hiding from those around him for years.

Hard Makeup

A young man steals a smuggler's goods and tries to sell them in a trip with his beloved to the border.

Poverty

A haughty acclaimed newly married fashion designer named Iraj is shown the door by his boss after the boss's son arrives at Iran to take over his father's company. Iraj reluctant to promulgate the loss of his job, starts using his savings, trying to conceal the truth from his naive wife. Having squandered all the money he had on trivial matters, he tells his wife about being axed & that's when the tables turn on him.

Wooden Bridge

It is about life of a young couple who want to migrate from their country. But the arrival of Nazli makes problems...

No Choice

A young homeless girl supports herself as a surrogate mother for money. A human rights attorney tries to help her change her life, but ithe challenges seem insurmountable. This is a rarely seen side of Iranian society.

Orange Suit

The story of a professional photographer Hamed Aban and the radical change in his life. The teacher of his son gives him a book about nature and the cleaning of it. This changes him radically. He goes and hires himself in the municipality, wearing the orange suit like them and cleaning the streets, collecting garbage. Meanwhile his wife who is in Europe back home and is very angry with him. She insists on him to get back to his former work but he refusing. Then she wants a divorce and to take the son with herself to Europe.

A Thousand Women Like Me

In modern day Iran, a female attorney fights for the custody of her seven year old diabetic son following a divorce from her husband. When the courts rule against her, she takes desperate actions that lead to tragic events.

The Hidden Half

An official is sent from his home in Tehran to hear the final appeal of a woman sentenced to death, a political prisoner. The official's wife of nearly 20 years, Fereshteh Samimi, writes him a letter to read when he reaches the hotel - the story of her student days during the revolution of 1978. We see the story in flashbacks as he reads: she leaves her province on scholarship, joins a Communist youth group, avoids arrest, and comes under the sway of a suave older man, Roozbeh Javid, a literary-magazine editor. As she tells her husband about the hidden half of her life, Fereshteh asks that he listen to the woman facing execution, a woman and therefore one of Iran's hidden half.

Revolution

A coming-of-age story about Jack, a 16-year old Iranian boy growing up in 1989 Los Angeles. With the 1979 Iranian Revolution a distant memory, the AIDS movement as a backdrop, and a haunting score by Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij, Jack learns how to stage his own much smaller revolution within the confines of his traditional family.

Duel

The story of Zeinal, a man who after 20 years of being a POW, tries to clear up his past.

The father of other

Plot unavailable