Breaking Bread

Since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, capital punishment is carried out according to Islamic law, which gives the family of the victim ownership of the offender's life. Day Break - based on a compilation of true stories and shot inside Tehran's century-old prison - revolves around the imminent execution of Mansour, a man found guilty of murder. When the family of the victim repeatedly fails to show up on the appointed day, Mansour's execution is postponed again and again. Stuck inside the purgatory of his own mind, he waits as time passes on without him, caught between life and death, retribution and forgiveness.

Mehran Karemi Nasseri, who now goes by the name "Sir Alfred", has been living in the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France. For the past twelve years he has been waiting for the document that would allow him to leave. Unlike the story that has been told in the world press of a man trapped in the underground terminals of an airport, dubbed the, "strangest case in immigration history", this documentary examines the life of a man whose only aspiration is to be somebody else.

Shahrbanoo is an unlikely story. The encounter of an American woman with a super-conservative Iranian family living in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Tehran was surely not an accident waiting to happen. The centerpiece of the story is Melissa who was visiting her new husband’s family in Tehran in the autumn of 2000. She was befriended by Shahrbanoo who has been moonlighting as her mother-in-law's housekeeper for more than a quarter of a century without the knowledge of her own family. Shahrbanoo invites Melissa -- and her husband with his ever-present camera in tow -- to a family gathering where she is t treated to an intense cultural exchange about subjects ranging from women’s place in society to American foreign policy. But this is not a movie about politics. It is a heart-warming, alternatively hilarious, harrowing and heartrending, testimony to the hidden ties that connect us across vast cultural gulfs.