Anouar Brahem

Twelve-year-old Noura dangles uncertainly in that difficult netherworld between childhood and adulthood. His growing libido has gotten him banned from the women's baths, where his mother took him when he was younger, but he's not yet old enough to participate in grown-up discussions with the men of his Tunisian village. Noura's only real friend is a troublemaker named Salih -- the village political outcast.

In this Sufi tale, Nadia, a young Moroccan emigre returns from Paris to Fez to visit her dying father. At his funeral, she is overcome by the voice of mystic Kirana chanting the Koran. A powerful friendship develops between the two women as they decide to turn the father's palace into a shelter for Muslim women.

A three-chapter (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise) meditation on the city of Sarajevo in the wake of the Bosnian war, on Palestine and Israel, and on war itself.

The death of a prince brings a young woman back to the palace where she was born into servitude. The lingering legacy is brought into light from behind frosted windows and velvet curtains.

Fred, a photographer, is in Tunisia to report on the « Bezness » (male prostitutes). Thanks to Roufa, Fred will discover this surprising environment where young men are confronted with the contradictions between tradition and modernity.

A policeman lunching with his daughter is present when a dead body washes up on shore. He investigates, leading him down a twisted and muddled path of nefarious connections reflecting, somewhat, his own life.

An 18 year old on the island Djerba, Aicha, is married to Said, who works in Tunis for much of the year. Aicha breaks with tradition and decides to join Said in Tunis, weaving rugs to make money. Said asks that she give him a son, so Aicha lives under the rule of her mother-in-law.

Youssef Soltane, a 45-year-old Tunisian intellectual, is the product of a generation that lived the era of euphoria and great ideologies in the sixties, and their subsequent failure. He was incarcerated and tortured for his political opinions. Furthermore, his relationship with Zineb, a young, beautiful bourgeois, only brings him more trouble. During one long winter night, Youssef wanders in search of an emotional haven, prey to all the questions that flood his memory.

In the wake of the Egyptian revolution, four women speak of their fight for the future and what it means to be a woman in Egypt.

This heartfelt documentary from award-winning filmmaker Mai Masri explores the enduring friendship that evolves between two Palestinian girls—Mona, who was born and raised in the economically marginalized Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, and Manar, who lives in the Dheisha refugee camp under Israeli control. The two girls begin their friendship as penpals, sharing the similarities and differences of life in the two refugee camps. Mona and Manar are finally able to meet face-to-face at the Lebanese-Israeli border during Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon. But when the second intifada suddenly erupts around them shortly thereafter, both girls must face heart-breaking changes in their lives.

On the way through a world of sounds and noise – with Manfred Eicher, the oustanding discoverer and mediator of contemporary music and founder of the music label ECM. On this journey we are meeting musicians and composers, but also people and places which are connected with him and with each other. We are encountering stories, landscapes, cities, disputes and hugs, tranquillity, hectic pace, work, self-doubt, joy, passion.

The 27 years old Nozha comes home with a sense of failure and despair following a long absence after marrying against her family's will.

When her husband died Soumicha, mother of three, had to earn a living. She became the only woman taxi driver in Sidi Bel-Abbès, Algeria. This film accompanies Soumicha around a city where religious and political violence rages, and records her experiences in a job normally reserved for men.