The Film Sufi

At first The Pear Tree ( Derakht-e Golabi , 1998) seems more like a contemplative meditation than a story.  There doesn’t seem to be a c...

The Patience Stone ( Syngué Sabour , 2012) concerns a young woman’s self-realization in war-torn Afghanistan. Like many of the films pro...

Sometimes a significant aspect of a narrative, besides the telling of events in the "present", is the slow disclosure of the ba...

When middle-class Iranians in Tehran have a holiday, they often like to escape their dry urban confines and trek up north to the Caspian se...

Certainly love is the principal driver of artistic expression, and the film medium’s capability of immersing the viewer in the rich, partic...

In Nacer Khemir’s Bab’Aziz (2005), the red-headed and seemingly half-mad dervish observes: “The people of this world are like the three ...