In this collection, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales filled with opposites: the boredom and brutality of war; modern urban life and rural traditions; tender desire and sudden violence. Mandanipour delivers fierce social critique in stories steeped in the beauty of an ancient land and culture.

Panah Panahi, son and collaborator of embattled filmmaker Jafar Panahi and apprentice to Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, makes a striking feature debut with this charming, sharp-witted, and deeply moving comic drama. HIT THE ROAD takes the tradition of the Iranian road-trip movie and adds unexpected twists and turns. It follows a family of four - two middle-aged parents and their sons, one a taciturn adult, the other a ebullient six-year-old - as...

Actress Behnaz Jafari is distraught when she comes across a young girl's video plea for help after her family prevents her from taking up her studies at the Tehran drama conservatory. Behnaz abandons her shoot and turns to filmmaker Jafar Panahi to help with the young girl's troubles. They travel by car to the rural Northwest, where they have encounters with the charming and generous folk of the girl's mountain village. But Behnaz and Jafar also discover...

The first Iranian Vampire Western ever made. A joyful mash up of genre, archetype, and iconography, its prolific influences span spaghetti westerns, graphic novels, horror films and the Iranian New Wave.

Shahriar Mandanipour, a contemporary and controversial Iranian writer, presents his first novel written in English. Seamlessly entwining two related narratives, Mandanipour unfolds the tale of an Iranian writer attempting to pen a love story set in present-day Iran. Similar to Romeo and Juliet, the writer's two lovers struggle to endure against powerful external forces. Unfortunately, though, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance furiously...

Jafar Panahi drives a yellow cab through the vibrant streets of Tehran, picking up a diverse group of passengers in a single day. Each man, woman, and child candidly expresses his or her own view of the world while being interviewed by the curious and gracious driver.

A derelict oil tanker is home to cast-off members of the Sunni-Arab minority of Iran. When the owner decides to sell it, it is up to the self-proclaimed patriarch of the ship to provide a future for the people of his floating city, no matter the cost.

When a journalist is stranded in her remote village, Zahra takes a bold chance to reveal what the villagers will stop at nothing to keep hidden. Thus begins the remarkable story of what happened to Soraya, a kind-spirited woman whose bad marriage leads her cruel, divorce-seeking husband to trump up false charges of infidelity, which carry an unimaginable penalty.

Close-up: The true story of Hossain Sabzian, a poor, underemployed, divorced, father of two who is obsessed with the cinema. In 1989, Sabzian convinced the Ahankhah family that he was Iranian filmmaker Moshen Makhmalbaf (The Silence) and that he would cast them in his next film. Eventually, the family caught on to the ruse and contacted the authorities, leading to Sabzian's arrest. A journalist wrote a column about the incident that Kiarostami read....