Babak Jalali

A brilliant and misunderstood Iranian writer struggles to pursue his ambitious goal of bringing together Metallica and Kabul Dreams, Afghanistan's first rock band.

Amanda, 24, lives mostly isolated and has never had any friends, even if it's the thing she wants the most. Amanda chooses her new mission as to convince her childhood friend to believe that they are still best friends.

Donya, a lonely Afghan refugee and former translator, spends her twenties drifting through a meager existence in Fremont, California. Shuttling between her job writing fortunes for a fortune cookie factory and sessions with her eccentric therapist, Donya suffers from insomnia and survivor's guilt over those still left behind in Kabul as she desperately searches for love.

A recent college graduate flees to Paris after a break-up, where his involvement with a prostitute begins to reveal a potentially dark recent past.

Palestinian-Syrian teenager Nasser and his older brother Yassin have been living in a Greek refugee camp, awaiting a decision on their asylum application. They pass the time recording comedy sketches, fantasizing of making zombie films and moving to Sweden. Nasser, however, feels increasingly trapped in this no-man’s-land. With nowhere to escape, Boiling tensions in the camp push Nasser to another world.

Ever since he was a child, the seventeen-years-old Edoardo has suffered from a malformation of the foreskin that stops him from masturbating and makes him insecure and ill at ease with girls. Shut up in his sexless microcosm, Edoardo reacts with irritation to the pressures of the outside world, which do nothing but exacerbate his insecurity. Forced against his will to emerge from the shadows in which he has hidden for years, Edoardo will initially try to solve his problem by clumsy stratagems before finding, at last, the courage to face his own fears.

Since 2008, albinos in Tanzania have become human targets. Witch doctors offer huge sums of cash for their body parts to be used in magic potions. From 2008 to 2010, more than 200 witch-doctor inspired murders occurred. As a local saying goes: “Albinos do not die, they just disappear.” This is the story of Alias, an albino boy on the run. After his father’s murder, his mother sends him to the city. His uncle Kosmos, a truck driver, takes care of him. Alias learns fast in the city, selling sunglasses, DVDs and cellphones, it will not take long before the boy experiences at first hand the difficulties of life and of being different.

Holly spends days at her dead-end job fantasizing about holes in the space-time continuum and wondering where her life went wrong. When she meets Arabella, an eight-year-old rebel hoping to run away from her self-absorbed author father, Holly becomes convinced their meeting is a cosmic sign, and that Arabella is, in fact, her past self sent back for a second chance. The two embark on an unconventional road trip between two lost souls who might be exactly what the other needs.

Three lonely people, each looking for love in their own ways. This is hard enough in any big city – never mind in Tehran, where individual freedoms can’t be taken for granted. In a sexy voice on the telephone, an overweight receptionist seduces men who wouldn’t look twice at her real ‘me’. A former bodybuilding champion now earns a living as a personal trainer. When he develops feelings for a promising young sportsman as a client; he drops everything else; even a very promising acting job for a well-known French director. A singer at religious funerals is dumped by his fiancée. He tries to find new purpose in life by retraining as a singer at weddings and parties. That’s a lot more attractive to women, his friend assures him.

On Iran's northern frontier with Turkmenistan, the land of "heartbreak and tractors", director Babak Jalali mines absurdist humour and quiet pathos from the immutable routines of a stranded group of men.

The Yellow Eagle family are Native American and live on the Prairie Wolf Indian Reservation. News reaches them that Floyd, the youngest son of the family, has died during military service in Afghanistan. The waiting begins to get his body back to the Reservation to be buried.

The unexpected arrival of Uncle Baccio in the country house where his son Corso is spending his holidays with some friends has uncontrollable consequences.