No. 17 Soheila

Three young Iranian women, all deaf-mute karate champions, are invited to compete at the World Championships in Germany. Tehran's authorities don't see an issue, as long as they wear a hood to cover their hair and neck.

When the truck is stolen from his father and with him his livelihood as a mobile apple seller, his son Saeed cannot meet the demand of supplying a basket of apples to school. A razor-sharp look at the age-old city versus countryside discrepancy the film follows Saeed through the alleys and streets of a Tehran suburb in search of a solution.

Mamo, an old and legendary Kurdish musician living in Iran, plans to give one final concert in Iraqi Kurdistan. After seven months of trying to get a permit and rounding up his ten sons, he sets out for the long and troublesome journey in a derelict bus, denying a recurring vision of his own death at half moon. Halfway the party halts at a small village to pick up female singer Hesho, which will only add to the difficulty of the undertaking, as it is forbidden for Iranian women to sing in public, let alone in the company of men. But Mamo is determined to carry through, if not for the gullible antics of the bus driver.

Roya is a resourceful young woman who is juggling with loans to pay back a large debt. With her gift of the gab and her determination to fight her way out, she finds herself at the top of a small ponzi scheme that promises to be lucrative, but very soon the mechanism seizes up and a sense of control gives way to anxiety. With a sense of narrative sequencing akin to his senior, Jafar Panahi (The Circle, Blood and Gold), Mahmoud Ghaffari portrays a protagonist hemmed in by a double straightjacket, one where social and gender inequality are inextricably intertwined. His character is neither a heroine nor the passive victim of a crushing system but warrior-like yet evanescent. Arguably, this determination, which draws its energy from despair, can be seen as an obligation incumbent on any filmmaker practising their art in today’s Iran: the obligation to fight up to the point where one’s very absence leaves a void full of meaning.

Aslan is in love with Yassi. Together, they run an underground dog shelter in Iran.