Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .D373 2015
The mysterious disappearance of a kindergarten teacher during a picnic in the north of Iran is followed by a series of misadventures for her fellow travelers.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .A1 K598 2019
A director and his son return to a region damaged by the Guilan earthquake, hoping to find the children who appeared in his film a few years earlier. (Part of the the Koker Trilogy disc set.)

Streaming until January 9, 2026.
After twelve years of imprisonment by their own parents, two sisters are finally released by social workers to face the outside world for the first time.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .P3585 2015
In a post-Taliban Afghanistan a young woman attends school against her conservative father's will, hoping to learn more about democracy to fulfill her dream of being the country's next president.

Streaming.
In a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .B3485 2010
Nazim, formerly a cyclist, but now a lowly Afghan guest worker in Iran, must overcome many obstacles in his attempt to ride a bicycle continuously for seven days and nights, in order to obtain money to pay for medical care for his desperately ill wife.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .T287 2008
A group of male teachers crosses the mountainous paths of the remote Iranian Kurdish region. The men wander from village to village in search of students, carrying large blackboards on their backs. The boards are sometime used as shelter, camouflage, and shields instead of for teaching purposes. One by one the men venture away from the group in search of students to teach. Along their way they must face other hardships and obstacles, including unseen enemy helicopters and gunfire.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .A6825 2022
The domestic problems of a wealthy young couple goes through the scrutiny of an adroit psychologist to be solved.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .B1928 1999
A young boy, Ali, loses his sister Zahra's school shoes. In order to stay out of trouble, the two come up with a plan to share Ali's shoes, but they must keep it a secret from their parents.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1992.934 .I73 2001
This film offers insights into the lives of women in Iran. As the narrative dynamically shifts from woman to woman, their stories culminate with tremendous potency, transforming a shared sense of despair and injustice into one of kinship and even hope.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .K548 2010
The true story of Hossain Sabzian, a cinephile who impersonated the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf to convince a family they would star in his so-called new film.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .R236 2000
The story of Mohammed, a blind Iranian boy and his father, Hashem, who is always oscillating between accepting his son as he is and abandoning him, as he represents a burden for him, after the loss of his wife.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .T335 2004
An Iranian pizza delivery man sees the worst of corruption and social unbalance in his city and is driven to crime.

Bizzell Reserves HQ 922.56 .D58 2003
(Documentary.) Looks inside an Iranian divorce court and shows how women are treated under Islamic law.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .C4575 2017
On the last Wednesday before the spring solstice ushers in the Persian New Year, people set off fireworks following an ancient Zoroastrian tradition. Rouhi, spending her first day at a new job, finds herself in the midst of a different kind of fireworks -- a domestic dispute between her new boss and his wife.

Bizzell Reserves PK 6561 .M229 A6 2018
When an old couple washes their gabbeh - a type of Persian rug - a young woman magically appears and tells them her life story.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .N575 2008
Mamo, an old and legendary Kurdish musician living in Iran, plans to give one final concert in Iraqi Kurdistan. After seven months of trying to get a permit and rounding up his ten sons, he sets out for the long and troublesome journey in a derelict bus, denying a recurring vision of his own death at half moon. Halfway the party halts at a small village to pick up female singer Hesho, which will only add to the difficulty of the undertaking, as it is forbidden for Iranian women to sing in public, let alone in the company of men. But Mamo is determined to carry through, if not for the gullible antics of the bus driver.

Bizzell Reserves E 183.8 .I55 I73 2006
(Documentary.) Looks at the Iranian Hostage Crisis where hundreds of Islamic students occupied the American Embassy in Tehran. They took the diplomats hostage in a crisis that ended up toppling President Jimmy Carter and forced the world to acknowledge the growing revolutionary force of Islam.

Streaming until January 10, 2026.
(Documentary.) The Fall of the Shah can be traced back to 1951 when Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh tried to end British domination of Iran. Mossadegh nationalized Iranian oil which had been monopolized by a single British company, BP, for more than 40 years. Mossadegh had to fight against a virtual alliance of foreign and domestic enemies. They undermined him in a struggle for power and control of oil. A struggle which culminated in a coup d’etat plotted and carried out by the CIA in August 1953. More than five decades later it is impossible to understand Iran without understanding Mossadegh’s victories and failures. Through exclusive access to eye-witnesses and the characters of the story in Iran, UK and the US as well as never before seen archival material we tell the gripping story of the rise and fall of Mossadegh.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .S224 2003
After an Afghanistan-born woman who lives in Canada receives a letter from her suicidal sister, she takes a perilous journey through Afghanistan to try to find her.

Streaming.
Filmed in a woman's restroom located in a public park in Iran's metropolitan center of Tehran, this documentary explodes Western stereotyping of women in Iran. The elder who runs the washroom offers a shoulder to cry on or tough love in a place where women, many of them especially marginalized because they are prostitutes, addicts or runaways, feel safe enough to remove their veils, and draw on cigarettes and their opinions on a wide range of subjects that men cannot hear them speaking about: sex, family abuse, relationships, drugs, religion, self-mutilation. The director (and admired actress) supplies the audience with an unflinching, detailed examination of the lives of the women who use the restroom as a gathering place.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .P3437 2006
The action takes place in 1930's Tehran where a sinister brother and sister plot to dispose of their recently widowed sister-in-law in order to obtain her inheritance.

Streaming
A wife in Iran who cannot have children is pressured by her in-laws into persuading her husband to take another wife so that he may have sons. A portrayal of the clash between tradition and modern marriage in Iran.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .I768 2006
Ghassem (Hamid Farrokhnezhad) is a man at his wit's end and desperate to get his family out of Iran. Together with his pregnant wife, he hijacks a plane, but undercover officers onboard the flight will not let the hijacking go smoothly.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .A9649 2003
During the war between Iran and Iraq, a group of Iranian Kurd musicians set off on an almost impossible mission. They will try to find Hanareh, a singer with a magic voice who crossed the border and may now be in danger in the Iraqi Kurdistan. As in his previous films, this Kurdish director is again focusing on the oppression of his people.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .N959 2005
A semi-autobiographical account of Makmahlbaf's experience as a teenager when, as a 17-year-old, he stabbed a policeman at a protest rally. Two decades later, he tracks down the policeman he injured in an attempt to make amends.

Streaming until January 10, 2026.
Gently biting social comedy on the shared expectations of Persian hospitality. A mother of a poor family has guests coming for dinner, yet doesn't know how to get the dinner party organized without calling in the resources of the whole neighborhood, centered on the communal courtyard of their traditional apartment building.

Bizzell Reserves BL 2270 .M97 2003
(Documentary.) Aryana Farshad's quest in her native Iran to explore the religious rituals and traditions that have fascinated the Western world for centuries. Includes rare glimpses of the women's chamber at the Great Mosque, the fire rituals in Zarathustra, and the dance of the Dervishes in Kurdistan.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .A385 2007
During the 2006 Iran-Bahrain match, the Tehran soccer stadium roars with 100,000 cheering men and, officially, no women. According to Islamic custom, women are not permitted to watch or participate in men's sports. Many of the ambitious young female fans who manage to sneak into the arena are caught and sent to a holding pen, guarded by male soldiers their own age. Duty makes these young men and women adversaries, but duty can't overcome their shared dreams, their mutual attraction, and ultimately their overriding sense of national pride and humanity.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .N33237 2005
In this playful yet allegorical fable, a cinematographer introduces movies to the Persian court. The Shah initially opposes the new medium but he falls in love with the film's heroine.

Streaming until January 10, 2026.
A top literature scholar suffers a nervous breakdown after a fire claims the life of one of her brothers. Her elder brother tries to save her. Loosely based on J.D. Salinger's novel Franny and Zooey.

Streaming until January 10, 2026.
Esteemed writer Mahmoud suffers from writers block. While trying to work at the family estate, concerns about an unproductive pear tree trigger in him memories of his childhood love for beautiful tomboy "M".

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .D316 2014
Consisting of three separate stories, the director explores "Man" as a theme: birth, life and death, to present a sometimes comic, sometimes tragic portrait of life at the bottom of the socio-economic pile.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1995.9 .P7 S165 2020
A director places an ad for actors. At least a thousand people answer the ad in person, and the director decides to make a movie about the response to the ad and the auditions of some of the respondents.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .F87 2017
While Ranaa and Emad, a married couple, are participating in a production of "Death of a Salesman," she is assaulted in their new home, which leaves him determined to find the perpetrator over his wife's traumatized objections.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .S265 2010
Not being able to work because of the religious country's prejudice against music, a talented Santour player has to deal with poverty, addiction and the absence of his ex-wife.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .R393 2002
It's Election Day on a remote island off the coast of Iran and a ballot box is parachuted to shore. An unnamed soldier is assigned to escort a female bureaucrat to gather votes. Together, they embark on a chaotic journey, turning the island upside down desperately seeking anyone's vote! A brilliant portrait of how democracy might work in an Iranian setting.

Bizzell Reserves PK 6561 .M229 A6 2018
Khorshid, a young blind boy from Tajikistan who earns rent money for his family by tuning rare instruments but becomes enraptured by the sonorous music he hears on his way to work each day.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .A965 2010
After being let go from his job on an ostrich farm a man leaves his small village to find work in the big city. As a motorcycle taxi driver, he soon becomes consumed with his passengers' lives, and is swept up in a world of greed. Now it is up to his family back home to help restore his caring and generous nature.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .S864 2009
An arrogant movie star's life drastically changes when a teenage girl shows up.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .I359 2006
An apartment building manager in league with a realtor plans to illegally evict the tenants and sell the building out from under them. But apartments are hard to find in the city, and the tenants won't budge.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .A1 K598 2019
A depiction of the off-screen relationship between the actors who play the newlyweds in the film And Life Goes On. (Part of the the Koker Trilogy disc set.)

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .T535 2006
During a train journey from Central Europe to Rome, characters connect through casual encounters and set forth a story of love, chance and sacrifice. One single journey sparks many changes for many people.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .L35 2005
Near the Iraqi-Turkish border on the eve of an American invasion, refugee children like 13-year-old Kak (Ebrahim), gauge and await their fate.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997.2 .Z367 2006
A woman trapped in an unhappy marriage: Sima, must contend with a husband so insensitive that he makes no effort to hide his various sexual indiscretions. He forces her into an even more uncomfortable situation when he asks his wife to pretend she is related to his current girlfriend in order to avoid trouble from a society that punishes unmarried couples for being together in public.

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .A1 K598 2019
A boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken--and transforms it into a miraculous child's-eye adventure of the everyday. (Part of the the Koker Trilogy disc set.)

Bizzell Reserves PN 1997 .B19547 2002
Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.