Political prisoner Aziz (Kianian) returns to his seaside home after two decades behind bars only to find his former flame, Atieh (Nonahali), running a restaurant on the estate. To protect the family business, Atieh's daughter, Touka (Farahani), conspires to woo Aziz's heart with the promise of rekindled romance, and his stomach with mouth-watering dishes.

Screenwriter: Ali Rafiee. Cast: Reza Kianian, Roya Nonahali, Golshifteh Farahani. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 96 min.

Political prisoner Aziz (Kianian) returns to his seaside home after two decades behind bars only to find his former flame, Atieh (Nonahali), running a restaurant on the estate. To protect the family business, Atieh's daughter, Touka (Farahani), conspires to woo Aziz’s heart with the promise of rekindled romance, and his stomach with mouth-watering dishes.

Screenwriter: A. Rafiee. Cast: Reza Kianian, Roya Nonahali, Golshifteh Farahani. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 96 min.

Based on a story by Abbas Kiarostami, director Mani Haghighi's film, which equally invites and defies allegory, pits four middle-aged men against a seemingly immobile rock. While the boulder remains stubbornly upright, the characters' quest to topple it drives them further and further into comic madness, and what begins as macho tomfoolery transforms into emasculating obsession.

Screenwriter: Mani Haghighi. Cast: Attila Pesyani, Mahmoud Kalari, Ahmad Hamed. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. HD, 77 min.

When his wife doesn't return home one evening, an upset husband phones his friend for solace and advice.

Cast: Alireza Amirhajebi, Maryam Yavari. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. HDcam, 8 min.

Director Kashani's first-person documentary focuses on her father and his close-knit group of male friends who maintained their tight bonds after emigrating from Iran to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960's and '70s. Their personal stories are interwoven with a political and industrial history of Iran in the last century and the struggle to control the country's most coveted natural resource: oil.

Screenwriter: Maryam Kashani. Cast: Mansour Kashani, Nasser Kashani, Farhad Ahmadi, Sohrab Ahmadi, Abbas Barzgar, Rahman Farsi, Saeed Ghazi, Mohammad Talai. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. 16mm, 71 min.

With a humorous touch, documentary filmmaker Oskouei shines a light on Iran's booming nose job market, where a startling 60,000 to 70,000 men and women go under the knife each year.

Screenwriter: M. Oskouei. Cast: Mandan Karimi, Alireza Bahrami. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. Beta-SP, 52 min.

Hamz and Lazarz's documentary illustrates a slice of Tehran's diverse underground music scene and the performers who must contend with the government's cultural gatekeepers, the Ershad, who hold the authority to ban performances and CDs. Some musicians have taken foreign sounds and made them uniquely Iranian–including a rock band inspired by a 14th century Persian poet, and a rapper who quotes from the Koran.

Cast: Shadi Vatanparast, Shahram Sharbar, Babak Akhoondy. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. Video, 97 min.

Nearly three decades after Iran's Islamic revolution, female singers are still forbidden to perform solo. Mirtahmasb's short documentary follows several women struggling to make their voices heard within the limits of the law.

Cast: Kiana Kiaras, Darya Dadvar, Mamak Khadem, Pari Maleki. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. Video, 40 min.

Bride-to-be Sara (Kosari, Bani-Etemad's real-life daughter) relapses into heroin abuse while her fiancé is studying in Canada. Sara's mother (Farahi), desperate to clean up her daughter before the wedding, loads her into a car and heads for a rehabilitation center near the Caspian Sea.

Screenwriter: R. Bani-Etemad, Farid Mostafavi, M. Abdolvahab, Naghmeh Samini. Cast: Bita Farahi, Baran Kosari, Masoud Rayegan. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 78 min.

Farmanara's richly symbolic drama follows writers and friends, Sa'adi (Kianian) who has recently returned to Iran after 30 years spent in Europe, and Shebli, who stayed behind, eventually enjoying success as his homeland's most acclaimed novelist.

Screenwriter: Bahman Farmanara. Cast: Reza Kianian, Jamshid Mashayekhi. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 100 min.

A deceptively prosaic encounter between two crane operators – one an elderly former teacher, the other a romantically troubled younger man.

Screenwriter: Mahin Abbas-Zadeh, M. Jafari. Cast: Ahmad Reza Asadi, Javad Emami. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 12 min.

This engaging and informative overview of Iranian cinema includes fascinating interviews with renowned Iranian film directors. Interspersed with archival footage from the Shah's reign through the tumultuous time before and during the revolution, and with an incredible array of rare film clips, Homayoun's film is an eye-opening portrait of Iran through its cinema of the past 70 years.

Screenwriter: Nicolas Bertrand, N. T. Homayoun. Cast: Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Amir Naderi, Dariush Mehrjui, Feredoun Goleh, Bahman Ghobadi, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Farokh Ghafari. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. Video, 98 min.

When an aspiring actress wrangles a small role for her out-of-work father (Entezami, in a tour-de-force performance), the man finds only abuse and ultimately heartbreak on-set. Condemned by Iran's censors, who banned the film and destroyed the negative, this print is the only surviving uncut version of the film.

Screenwriter: Fereydoun Jeyrani. Cast: Ezatollah Entezami, Andisheh Fouadvand. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 98 min.