The Silence

Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh is just the second Iranian film ever widely distributed in the U.S. (Jafar Panahi's The White Balloon was the first). A gabbeh is an Iranian carpet produced by the nomadic Ghashghai tribe of southern Iran, comparable to the folk art of American quilts; in the film's opening scenes, an elderly husband and wife travel to a nearby stream to wash their gabbeh, discussing the meaning behind the figures sewn upon it. The rug depicts a…Read More

History and truth are often a matter of perspective as can be seen in this deceptively simple and wry Iranian-French comedy that begins as an aging police officer enters the Tehran home of real-life filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf (who also wrote the ...…Read More

Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf examines the troubling story of life in neighboring Afghanistan in this compelling drama. Nafas (Niloufar Pazira) is a reporter who was born in Afghanistan, but fled with her family to Canada as a child, escaping ...…Read More