Best Iranian documentary movies

Set in a leper colony in the north of Iran, The House is Black juxtaposes "ugliness," of which there is much in the world as stated in the opening scenes, with religion and gratitude.

Renowned Iranian director Jafar Panahi received a 6-year prison sentence and a 20-year ban from filmmaking and conducting interviews with foreign press due to his open support for the opposition party in Iran's 2009 election. In this film, which was shot secretly by Panahi's close friend Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and smuggled into France on a USB stick concealed inside a cake for a last-minute submission to Cannes, Panahi documents his daily life under house arrest as he awaits a decision on his appeal.

The story of young Afghan girls learning to read, write and skateboard in Kabul.

An Iranian girl unfolds her school memories through the wrinkles and fabrics of her old uniform. She admits that she's nothing but a "female" and explores the roots of this idea in her school years.

Makhmalbaf puts an advertisement in the papers calling for an open casting for his next movie. However when hundreds of people show up, he decides to make a movie about the casting and the screen tests of the would-be actors.

Young male students at a local Iranian school are asked about their feelings on homework.

Anoosh and Arash are at the center of Tehran’s underground techno scene. Tired of hiding from the police and their stagnating career, they organize one last manic techno rave under dangerous circumstances in the desert. Back in Tehran they try their luck selling their illegally printed music album without permission. When Anoosh is arrested, there seems to be no hope left. But then they receive a phone call from the biggest techno festival in the world. Once landed in Switzerland, the haze of the instant euphoria evaporates quickly when the seriousness of the situation starts to dawn on them.

If 18-year-old Sonita had a say, Michael Jackson and Rihanna would be her parents and she'd be a rapper who tells the story of Afghan women and their fate as child brides. She finds out that her family plans to sell her to an unknown husband for $9,000.

During breaktime, Dara and Nader have a fierce argument about a torn exercise book that the former has given back to the latter. There are two possible outcomes, which the film shows one after the other. One is that Dara wants to get his own back, and the two boys start a violent fight; the other is that they work together to mend the exercise book with a little glue.

In March 2012, Iranian movie "A Separation" by Asghar Farhadi, won the Oscar Award for the Best Foreign Language Film. For the Iranian people this was more than a cinematic award. When sanctions and threats of war with Iran covered the world headlines, Farhadi talked about Iran's love for peace and the rich culture of the Iranians on the stage when receiving his award. This time the Iranians voice was heard through someone other than the government officials. This documentary shows the reaction of the Iranians to this Oscar award and has a general view on Iran's society of today.

Bahman Mohassess was a celebrated artist at the time of the Shah. Trained in Italy, he created sculptures and paintings in his homeland. But audiences often took offence at the pronounced phalli on his mostly naked bronze figures and his work was regularly censored. All traces of him were lost after the revolution. It was said he destroyed his remaining paintings and disappeared.

Mania Akbari collaborates with British sculptor Douglas White to coin a tender fusion of langauge, where a meeting of cinema and sculpture investigates the processes of physical and psychological destruction and renewal. Begun a matter of weeks after first meeting, the film charts a deepening artistic and personal relationship exploring the nature of skin, family, death, water, desire and, throughout, a powerful will to form. Akbari looks into the connection between her body and the political history of Iran, investigating the relationship between her own physical traumas and the collective political memory of her birthplace. As she undergoes surgeries on a body decimated by cancer, remembrance and reconstruction provide a framework for investigating how bodies are traumatised, censored and politicized, and yet ultimately remain a site of possibility.

Pegah talks about Gholam, a man who’s not like her father, mother, uncles, or aunts, even though he’s always present at family gatherings. Gholam films these everyday scenes with his own camera. At the time, Pegah can’t imagine what the purpose of these films might be, but she’s happy to pose before the lens of this family friend, who she’s certainly very fond of.

One would not expect less life than in the desert of central Iran. But there is one man facing the power of nature: Mohammad Arefi is a shepherd - body and soul. For more than two generations his family has been doing this demanding job. Every day he takes care of over 300 goats and sheep.

A Real Hero is a short biographical documentary.

In the south of Iran, a woman travels every day from her village to the nearby mountain. For hours at a time, she labours away, breaking apart huge boulders with minimal equipment. Slowly & mysteriously, the film reveals the motivations that inspire her back-breaking work.

A playwright Iran tries to confront a creative crisis while political clashes erupt during her country's 2009 election.

A closed circuit camera for traffic control in Tehran reacts to the wanderings of a single woman on a high-way.

A documentary that follows two young women raising children and supporting drug habits through prostitution in Iran ruled by religious fundamentalists.

Farah, an Iranian woman, is forced to migrate to her private planet to be free. She buys other people’s memories in form of Super 8 films and records and archives her own to create an alternative history of Iran.

Synopsis for an impossible film. In 1998, two high school girls sent a letter to the first-ever women’s newspaper in Iran.

Asho knows not only how to deal with goats, he also knows about films. He tries to see at least one a day. His favourite director is Tim Burton. Always on the road (Asho means "eagle"), the Iranian shepherd's son dreams of being an actor. By his side: his cousin and future wife Pari. Pari thinks that if Asho becomes a star, then so should she. But they both have been for a long time: This is their behind-the-scenes.

Heavy snow falls from the sky as heavily-armed guards patrol the walls of an Iranian centre of correction and rehabilitation. Inside, the girls are waiting at the food counter. Among them are underage mothers and others who are married. All of them ended up here after becoming involved in crime. Drug dealing, assault, murder. Yet instead of cold-blooded criminals we discover friendly, warm young people who laugh, sing and cry together. Their close bonds have been forged by the troubled past they share. We learn of their fears of having to return to the lives they once left behind. The documental camera is intimate but respectful, the resulting portraits are full of dignity.

A documentary on the precarious lives of the koolbari, who carry goods on foot across the mountainous borders from Iran's northwestern Kurdish region.

A shocking portrait of the world of a recently captured serial killer, who sees his killing of prostitutes as in accordance with Islamic teaching. Over the space of a year, 16 women were murdered in the Iranian city of Mashad. Because the victims were lured into the killer's traps, the press soon called these the "spider killings." All but one of the victims had previously been arrested for prostitution and drug-related crimes. When a 39-year-old contractor is arrested and confesses to the crimes, he claims divine support for his crimes. His mother, wife, son, and many neighbors agree. AND ALONG CAME A SPIDER visits with the families of the victims, with the perpetrator and his family, and with prostitutes in this holy city. Most chillingly, the killer's son proudly re-enacts a murder, and suggests that he wants to grow up to be like his father. This is a chilling film about cycles of moral vengeance.

A daughter pushes at the bounds of her relationship with her mother as she unpicks the psychological consequences of the violence she suffered.

First Case, Second Case is a documentary about a teacher who sends a group of pupils out of the classroom when one of them does not own up to talking behind the master's back.

A documentary film about a boys school in Iran. The film shows numerous, funny and moving interviews of many different young pupils of this school summoned by their superintendent for questions of discipline. The man is not severe, but clever and fair. He teaches loyalty, fellowship and righteousness to these boys. Besides these interviews, we see scenes of this school’s quotidian life.

An old hermit lives in a slum and wants to teach the alphabet to the children who regularly go there to play. When a child proposes he use the word “Pelican” for the letter ‘P’, the hermit goes to the nearby park to see this animal he has never heard of.

"A humorous slice of educational instruction on refurbishing and painting" (MoMA).

This documentary follows the life of an 80-year-old mother named Firouzeh who is fond of her isolated lifestyle in nature with her cows. The film shows her kind and loving character and demonstrates her bravery and strength tackling the hardship of life in the Alborz mountains without the modern comforts of technology. She believes happiness lies in the simplicities of life.

The movie Okht al-Reza (Reza's sister) narrates the journey of the Lady of Dignity, Hazrat Masoumeh PBUH from Madinah to Qom. While portraying the events of the Prophet's path, her time, Ma'mun's conspiracies and efforts for her martyrdom, the work tries to express a mystical narrative of the character of Hazrat Masoumeh. It deals with the story of this journey, and includes passages about the political and social atmosphere of the time, where the general atmosphere of the storytelling is somewhat close to the documentary.

This is the story of Tehran from the Qajar time (middle of 19th century) to today. Tehran has become a metropolis from a small village, now a developed city with many social problems.

A psychiatric centre in Tehran is implementing a revolutionary project: allowing marriage between patients. These women and men in search of love will have to face the prejudices of a traditionalist society. A sensitive and delicate film on personal relationships and the complex notion of madness.

In an Iranian juvenile detention center, a group of adolescent girls serve their sentence for the grave crime of murdering their father, their husband or another male family member.

Satellite TV is illegal in Iran but it is also the nation's secret obsession. An indulgence which has seeped into every pore of Iranian life. Satellite dishes are everywhere; But ever careful to protect the populace from immoral outside influence, the Morality Police force entry into homes wielding wire cutters and sledgehammers; spoiling the fun.

Six urban women reveal their family recipes in a film that, at first glance, may look like an introduction to local cuisine, but which turns into a surprising exploration of relationships in modern Iranian society.

Touran Mirhadi (Khomarloo) is the founder of Farhad School, the Children's Book Council, and the Encyclopedia for Young People. She was also actively involved with close to 20 other institutions dealing with child development and education and supported the formation of dozens of others. She is known as the preeminent architect of childhood institution and the mother of modern education in Iran. This film follows the efforts and preoccupations of Ms. Touran Mirhadi in the last four years of her life. It shows how she strove to enrich the field of child education in Iran to the age of 89, always maintaining that peace was to be cultivated at childhood.

When Tehran hosts visiting foreign dignitaries, the local authorities clean up the city’s urban image through the controversial process of ‘urban beautification’. Those who are deemed unsavoury are rounded up – drug users, prostitutes and the homeless who sleep in cardboard boxes on sidewalks and who they would rather remain unseen. When these very important people leave, the men are released but the women are kept as wards of the state. An animated documentary made using hand-crafted cardboard miniatures and the voices of women to tell their story, one that has been five years in the making. A story that shows how the face of a city can change, but what is underneath often does not.

A young boy tells the story of his failed suicide bombing attack as if it was a heroic episode. “If the bomb had exploded, no one would have survived.” “Did you hope so?” “Yes, I will go back someday and kill everyone while I commit suicide.” The most petrifying words flow casually from the boy’s mouth. The main characters in Children of the Night are five boy soldiers under the age of 15. These children, who are raised as “bombs of anger” by ISIS, are war criminals and at the same time victims. How are we supposed to live with these children? How can they live a life in the world? Behind the beautiful shots captured with elaborate close-ups, director Nouranipour tackles a burdensome question.

An epistolary feature film: a cinematic discourse between a British director Mark Cousins, and an Iranian actress and director Mania Akbari which extends the concept of "essay film" with startling confrontations in the arenas of cultural issues, gender politics and differing artistic sensibilities. A unique journey into the minds of two exceptional filmmakers which becomes a love affair on film.

Against the backdrop of the Women, Life, Freedom protest movement in Iran, filmmaker Elahe Esmaili is helping her parents to pack up the family home. As the boxes stack up, discussions flare between the generations: Elahe does not wear the hijab, embodying the courage of her generation's struggles. But can changing a society be as simple as moving house?

A film about what totalitarians want from election, is second film from Kaleme which released before 10th parliament election of Iran

It is a half-an-hour Persian documentary movie, released by Kaleme website which is about Misrhossein Mousavi and the 2009 Iran coup detat.

A short experimental movie about loneliness. in the modern times, everybody is alone . there is scenes of loneliness and silence...

Against a backdrop of fortune telling and cosmetic tattoos, charismatic and creative salon owner Masoumeh navigates intimate conversations inside her shop in the Tehran neighborhood of Shush. Clients and neighbors open up as they enlist Masoumeh's expertise in this subtle examination of gender politics, fate, and cultural conventions and rituals of beauty.

The fringes of Iranian society can be a lonely place, especially if you are a teenage girl with few resources to fall back on. Finding Home follows four girls striving to pull themselves out of the margins by attending a one-of-kind rehabilitation center in uptown Tehran. Forget about the Iran that you've seen before. With a virtually invisible camera, the girls of Finding Home take us on a never-before-seen tour of the underclass of Iran with their brave and defiant stories: Samira struggles to overcome forced drug addiction; Mitra harnesses abandonment into her creative writing; Sussan teeters on a dangerous ledge after years of sexual abuse; and Nazila burgeons out of her hatred with her blazing rap music.

Alireza Shalikaran is serving time in prison for theft. He is a troublesome figure, trying as he does to escape from the prison and committing acts of violence. A handful he may be, but he finds a caring figure in the prison warden. The warden puts forward the case that Alireza might settle down when he finds a wife. Yet how is Alireza to find a wife when he is enclosed within the prison walls? The task of finding a marriage partner falls to Alireza's mother, who is also in prison. She comes across a young woman, who, though incarcerated for drug-related offences, is respectable. Will the match work? An interesting look at the limits of prison life.

"10 on Ten" is a 2004 Iranian documentary film directed by Abbas Kiarostami. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Looking to his own art for inspiration, Abbas Kiarostami reflects on his techniques of filming and how he taped certain sequences in "Ten" in 2001.

The film is a sobering, intimate and warm account of daily life in Kabul during the silent intervals between suicide bombings. The bombings that happened, and those that will, define life for the film's characters; a father who works as a bus driver, and two young boys whose policeman father is away due to murder threats.

This rarely screened early short made for The Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults documents the complete restauration of the Jahan-nama Palace, one of the Shah's traditional residencies.

After the of premiere of his film Terrestrial Verses (co-directed by Alireza Khatami) in Cannes, Ali Asgari was banned from traveling by the Iranian authorities. But filmmakers like Asgari are not easily deterred from practicing their art, despite unceasing repressive government interference.

The 45-year old Swedish woman, Kristina Paltén, ran across Iran to challenge her own prejudices against a culture and people she knew little about. She felt the very human need to trust in people.

A crew of a trawler crosses the ocean with one aim in mind: to catch 2000 tons of tuna. Out in the deep waters for months, these men share extremely harsh living conditions. Between poetry and social criticism, Fish Eye invites us to reflect on the mechanisms of capitalism through industrial-scale fishing.

A found-footage essay, Filmfarsi salvages low budget thrillers and melodramas suppressed following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

An examination of the work and lives of actresses in the Iranian film industry prior to the 1979 revolution, featuring myriad interviews and rare film clips.

DOOMSDAY MACHINE (Mashine Rooze Ghiamat) deals with the mentally disabled war veterans in one of the permanent sanatoriums in Tehran. One of the patients "Mahmood" is under the illusion that he has built a "doomsday machine" which can destroy the world by pressing a button.

An old couple leaves Tehran to return to their town on the Turkish border, which has become a clandestine gateway into Europe. Abolfazl Talooni sounds out the ambiguity of a people forced to participate in this traffic and dispossessed of their lands, where the beauty of the landscapes sketches out geopolitics of despair.

Jafar Panahi and fellow Iranian director Majid Barzegar take a 20-minute drive to Kiarostami’s grave, during which time “the two friends speak appropriately of cinema, but also censorship and festivals, police power and ideology.”

The Salesman is Asghar Farhadi's seventh film that won two trophies for the Best Actor and Best Screenplay at Cannes Film Festival in 2016 and the academy award for the best Foreign Language Film in 2017. About The Salesman is a documentary about Farhadi's method of filmmaking: development, pre-production, production, and post-production, with interviews with Asghar Farhadi and the analysis of the renowned Iranian and international film critics about The Salesman and Farhadi's cinema.

Abbas Kiarostami takes his camera to south of Italy and shows us a beautiful and playful video of alleys and stairs there.

This documentary movie explores the professional life of Parviz Fanizadeh, Iranian actor of the 60s and 70s cinema and theater, with investigating through archival footage of his works and referring to his fellow artists.

10 year old Molouk who seeking to preside over surviving children lives her friends by pulling out copper write from ruined houses.

Scenes from A Separation

An 80-year-old blind man from the south of Iran has the gift of narrating dreams. He chooses the rocks from the heart of the mountains by touching and tasting them, and with simple tools and a handsaw, without any special advanced tools, he makes traditional pots for the villagers.