Director Yuri Ancarani crosses the Persian Gulf to accompany a falconer to an important competition, entering the surreal world of wealthy Qatari sheikhs with a passion for amateur falconry. The opulence of this Middle Eastern gas state is on full display as the men race SUVs up and down sand dunes, fly their prized falcons around on private jets, and take their pet cheetahs out for desert spins in their souped-up Ferraris.
The film captures the daily duality of three young Palestinian women in Tel Aviv, caught between hometown tradition and big city abandon, and the price they must pay for a lifestyle that seems obvious to many: the freedom to work, party, have sex, and choose.
In 2013, in Cairo, a tragic fate brings together several detainees from different political and social backgrounds inside a police truck, during the turmoil that followed the ousting of president Morsi.
Four brothers committing crimes with a promise among them to stop someday. When a deal goes south, the older brother says it's enough, but the other three disagree and recklessly do business with a wanted crime lord.
A charming story about an 11-year-old boy, Sultan, looking for innocent love after loosing his mother when he was a kid. After Sultan finds an old box with his grandma's picture and clues to her location, he decides to go all the way with his best friend, Saud, to find her in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.
Iman, a young newly wed Palestinian bride, is arrested and incarcerated in a top-security Israeli prison where she gives birth to a baby boy. As she struggles to survive and raise her child behind bars, she is torn between her instinct as a mother and the difficult decisions she must make, finding through her relationship with the other prisoners - both Palestinian and Israeli – the time and space to reflect, develop and mature as a young woman.
Tarek and his mother Ghaydaa number among the tens of thousands of refugees crossing the border from Palestine, having been separated from Tarek's father amidst the chaos of the Six Day War. They ultimately settle at the Harir refugee camp, a makeshift home for a new generation displaced by conflict. Tarek dreams of being reunited with his father, and struggles to adapt to a new life far away from all he previously knew.
Tareq is released from an Israeli prison and returns to his hometown in Palestine, a place transformed by drastic changes and filled with secrets, to find his daughter. As secrets are uncovered, light is shed on the stifling nature of contemporary Palestinian society, while revealing Tareq’s hidden past. Inspired by true events.
An intimate, and often humorous, portrait of three generations of exile in the refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive, and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family in the lives of those for whom dispossession is the norm, and yearning their daily lives.
When a forty-year-old divorced father discovers that he needs to undergo an operation, which he can not afford, within the next 4 days, he finds himself forced to deal with the life he isolated himself from for the longest time.
An enterprising Saudi girl signs on for her school's Quran recitation competition as a way to raise the remaining funds she needs in order to buy the green bicycle that has captured her interest.
Through the stories of Assaad Shaftari, a former high-ranking militia officer, and Maryam Saiidi, the mother of a missing communist fighter, the film digs into war wounds and poses the question of whether or not redemption and forgiveness are possible.
Zaki, Mounir and Manal are in their twenties, and living in a confined community where basic needs are met yet chaos and disorder brew. The two boys are in love with the same girl who finds herself the subject of a bet for a football match between them, the winner marries Manal. This story reflects a football and play-station youth and how they deal with their emotions in a community that is increasingly closed off and isolated.
In a remote, isolated Lebanese village surrounded by land mines, Muslims and Christians live together in peace. As civil strife starts to engulf the country around them, the women in the village try, by various means and to varying success, to keep their men in the dark by sabotaging the village radio, and then destroying the village TV.
After a tempest, fishermen do not find only fish in their nets. That is what happens to Jafaar, a poor fisherman who lives poorly in Gaza. And what he hauls in is really upsetting: imagine that, a pig! An unclean animal judged impure not only by the Faith of Islam but also by the Jewish religion. Determined to get rid of the animal, Jafaar tries desperately to sell it, first to a United Nations official, then to a Jewish colony where Yelena raises pigs not for their meat but for security reasons. Of course, going unnoticed in the company of a "forbidden" animal, among his Palestinian brothers, past Israeli soldiers and under the scrutiny of Islamic fundamentalists is no bed of roses and a series of misadventures await Jafaar.
A woman who suffers from AIDS decides not to surrender to the fatal disease. She exerts huge efforts in trying to recover or by helping those who suffer the same disease by giving them glimmers of hope.
An Egyptian-American returns to his homeland after twenty years abroad, filled with nostalgia and high hopes. But as he reconnects with his roots, he finds himself caught between two worlds—and begins to experience the reality of a country he thought he knew.
A willful young boy follows his just and obstinate grandmother on a journey across Iraq, determined to discover the fate of her missing son, Ahmed's father, who never returned from war.
