Minoo who is married to Moosa recently, is moving to the new house. But Moosa receive a letter in which he being told to get back to the Minoo Island (a border island between Iran and Iraq), to dispatch a watch tower there from the period of war. Moosa who has a lot of memories of that place refuses to go there but his wife Minoo is insisting. Finally she manages to convince him and both go there.

A non-traditional wife and mother, Azar (Karimi) is first seen racing her dirt bike over a hilly track while her husband Amir (Azarang) and young daughter cheer her on. Co-equal with her liberal-minded husband in marriage and in their fledgling business venture, a café with a thriving carryout trade, she is forced to meet an unequal challenge in which the strict pecking order of a family dominated by misogynist uncle, a business loan with strings attached, a black sheep son with a hidden agenda, and a tragic accident add up to a scenario in which Azar is targeted as the unwilling sacrificial victim. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

Reza and Sadegh-Khan are old friends who are engaged in shady deeds. The next day after his wedding, Reza is arrested hauling the dead body of one of his friends. He is sentenced to jail. Years later, freed from the prison, he is now settled in a little town. A letter arrives from Sadegh to invite him back to the capital city in order to attend his son's wedding.

َA father, Daei Ghafur, does not accept his son's death during 1980-1988 conflict between Iran and Iraq, and believes he is alive despite all evidence indicating otherwise. One day he meets a young lady, Shirin, at the airport who has travelled from Europe to Iran looking for his brother, Khosrow, a missing soldier at war. Both start searching their loved ones...

Fereshteh loses her home and her two sons after her husband's accidental death when Hadj Safdar, her stubborn and powerful father-in-law, forces her to return to her parents. She is faced with the loss of her visitation rights when Hadj plans to send his grandchildren to live in a remote town. With the help of her circle of women friends she tries to take them beyond his reach, but in a patriarchal society it is hard to find a safe haven.

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.

Every time our annual international film fest hits town, I scan all the offerings, with special attention to Iranian productions. I have seen so many fascinating films from a country that, in recent years, has banned Hollywood and other films foreign to them, and yet their filmmakers, despite having to follow strict guidelines and risking censorship at every turn, produce some of the finest films in world cinema.
This documentary features interviews with several Iranian filmmakers, plus clips from a number of their best films. Among various aspects of Iranian film-making, they talk about how their reflective films differ from the Hollywood action variety, although there is such a role for Iranian film as well. What perhaps is really remarkable is how freely these producer/directors talk in a critical way about the censorship exercised in their country. The clever ways they get around it actually appear to challenge and enhance their creativity (as Duke Ellington once said, in describing how he had to compose his music to fit the talents and limitations of his band members, "It can be good to have limits"). Unusual scenarios between husbands and wives get around the rule that men and women, even when married, can't touch. Children are sometimes used to state in an allegorical or analogous fashion what could not be presented by adult characters. And the role of women is wondrously portrayed in these productions from a country that severely limits women's roles.

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.