Hiam Abbass

A widowed Tunisian seamstress takes an unlikely journey of self-discovery in writer-director Raja Amari's sumptuous and sensual film. (Zeitgeist Films)

Paradise Now is the story of two young Palestinian men as they embark upon what may be the last 48 hours of their lives. (Warner Independent Pictures)

Directed with equal parts humor and humanity by Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis, The Syrian Bride is set on the sun-baked border between Israel and Syria, a no man's land that the eponymous bride must cross in order to meet her anxious groom. (Film Forum)

Amos Gitai's beautiful new film is a quietly sweeping movie about intersected lives in transit. (New Yorker Films)

The Nativity Story chronicles the arduous journey of two people, Mary and Joseph, a miraculous pregnancy, and the history-defining birth of Jesus. (New Line Cinema)

A successful artist, weary of Parisian life and on the verge of divorce, returns to the country to live in his childhood house. He needs someone to make a real vegetable garden again out of the wilderness it has become. The gardener happens to be a former schoolfriend. A warm, fruitful conversation starts between the two men... (imdb)

Ahmed Kasmi and his family fled Algeria and he is now only a week away from getting his Canadian citizenship. Ahmed's teenaged son Hafid, secretly a part of a group of militants, breaks into the immigration office and deletes databanks worth of information. Captured by security cameras, the act is broadcast throughout the country on the nightly news, just as Ahmed is practicing "O Canada" in his living room... (All Movie Guide)

Attractive, educated and successful, Eloïse (Elsa Zylberstein) has it all, except for a long-term, stable romantic relationship. Now in her mid-30s, she can hear a certain clock ticking loudly. So she enrolls in a speed dating program. (imdb)

A college professor travels to New York to attend a conference and finds a young couple living in his apartment. (imdb)

Azure is a blond boy with blue eyes, Asmar has dark hair and dark eyes. As kids, they fought and loved each other as brothers do. As grown ups, they mercilessly become rival in the quest for the djinn's fairy, in a medieval Maghreb, full of dangers, magic spells and wonders. (IMDb)

A drama based on the true story of a Palestinian widow who must defend her lemontree field when a new Israeli Defense Minister moves next to her and threatens to have her lemon grove torn down. (imdb)

Human Zoo takes up the sociopathy of betrayal, in the context of love and war. (imdb comments)

A free spirited Palestinian dancer becomes the wife of a prisoner. (imdb)

The story of a mysterious loner, a stranger in the process of completing a criminal job.

A political drama centered around Israel's pullout from the occupied Gaza strip, in which a French woman of Israeli origin (Binoche) returns to the West Bank. (imdb)

One relatively easy way to label Bab Al-Shams is to describe it as an audiovisual account of the Palestinian struggle from 1943 to 1994. The film begins on the eve of the Oslo Accords, with Younis, an old fedayi, in a coma, and Khalil, his adopted son, reminding him of the former's life story while he nurses him, thus setting off an engaging string of narratives that speak of resistance and love.

A drama centered on an immigrant single mother and her teenage son in small town Illinois.

The solitary Daniel and Sonia share an uneasy love/hate relationship. Daniel's life is disrupted by the appearance of a stranger that proceeds to insinuate himself in his life. The man's persistence takes its toll on Daniel and Sonia, leaving Daniel alone with nagging questions of "Why?" (imdb)

With the story of the Israel/Palestine-conflict as a contextual backdrop, we are shown and told the story of four palestinian women. It's all centered around Dar Al-Tifl - a school and home for palestinian orphans in Israel. Miral - one of the girls - has to carry the weight of her people, her history and her family on her shoulders, as she grows up with terrorism, Intifada, civil war and political conflict. Can she maintain a individual ambition in all this?

Do Not Forget Me Istanbul, produced by Sevil Demirci and Hüseyin Karabey, who attained international recognition especially with My Marlon and Brando (2008), comprises of six short films made by six internationally acclaimed directors aiming to remind that Istanbul's past does not only belong to the current peoples of Turkey. (IKSV)

A thriller set in London's slave trade and centered on a woman's fight for freedom. (imdb)

Haifa, nicknamed after the city of his love and hope, goes around and comes around in a Palestinian refugee camp. Although he is everybody's fool, there are many things that only he knows. He is closely related to the family of Abu Said, a former policeman who gains new hopes from the political developments. Oum Said, his wife, hangs her hope on the imminent release of their eldest son, Said, from jail. She tries to find him a bride to secure things for the future. (imdb)

Tal, a 17 year old Israeli, and Naim, a 20 year old Palestinian, were born in a land of scorched earth. They must endure an explosive situation that is not of their choosing at an age where young people are falling in love and taking their place in adult life. A bottle thrown in the sea and a correspondence by email nurture the slender hope that their relationship might give them the strength to confront this harsh reality to grapple with it, and thereby ever so slightly change it. (imdb)

A bride-to-be is forced to reevaluate her life when she reunites with her family in Jordan and finds herself confronted with the aftermath of her parents' divorce. (imdb)

1975, Sarah, 8 years, is living in a Catholic orphanage. One day, her biological father, who she has never seen, presents itself and takes her with him for the weekend in Paris. But drugged, she wakes up in Morocco. From that moment on she only wants to choose instead of what they have chosen for her... her future life.

Laïla Marrakchi returns to the Festival with another lively family drama chronicling the foibles and hypocrisies of Morocco's middle class. (tiff.net)

Shattered by the loss of her child, Nyla Jayde, a brilliant criminal defense attorney, takes on a case involving a 14th century Moroccan legend, a vengeful spirit named "Kandisha". (imdb)

The defiant leader Moses rises up against the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses, setting 600,000 slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plagues. (imdb)

Alex, son of a leader of the Algerians in Marseilles, has a series of confrontations with the Corsican mafia after his stint in the French Foreign Legion. (imdb)

A sexually frustrated Palestinian-American agrees to marry an Israeli woman for a Green Card, triggering a war at home with his parents, who will stop at nothing to divorce him from his new wife.l (imdb)

Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years. (imdb)

A look at the lives of four British citizens who join ISIS in Syria. (imdb)

A mother attempts to keep her family safe as war rages and a sniper lies in wait outside her home. This nerve-wracking study of life in Damascus won an Audience Award at Berlinale. (imdb)

Algeria, 1990s. Nedjma, an 18 year-old student passionate about fashion design refuses to let the tragic events of the Algerian Civil War to keep her from experiencing a normal life and going out at night with her friend Wassila. As the social climate becomes more conservative, she rejects the new bans set by the radicals and decides to fight for her freedom and independence by putting up a fashion show.

Summer 1998, Kabul in ruins is occupied by the Taliban. In love despite the daily violence and misery, Mohsen and Zunaira want to believe in the future. But a senseless act by Mohsen will upset their lives forever. (imdb)

A struggling actress accepts to coach her famous sister on a tough shoot, but their relationship soon evolves into dark territory. (imdb)

Fatima is the manager of a Turkish bath where dozens of women come every day to share hopes and fears with their peers. They stroll around naked, smoke, as well as talk about sex, politics and religion. Each one of them, however, is not oblivious to the tumultuous reality that is unfolding outside. (mubi)

Gaza, today. Sixty-year-old fisherman Issa is secretly in love with Siham, a woman who works at the market with her daughter Leila. When he discovers an ancient phallic statue of Apollo in his fishing nets, Issa hides it, not knowing what to do with this mysterious and potent treasure. Yet deep inside, he feels that this discovery will change his life forever. Strangely, his confidence starts to grow, and eventually, he decides to approach Siham. (imdb)

In this reimagining of Clive Barker's seminal Hellraiser franchise, a young woman must confront the sadistic, supernatural forces behind an enigmatic puzzlebox responsible for her brother's disappearance. (imdb)

Because he wanted to protect his little brother from a father too violent, Teddy, a young man without history, is accused of the murder of his father and is sent to a closed educational center, waiting for his trial for parricide . He then plunges into a brutal universe of which he does not know the rules. (imdb)

Oussekine looks at the terrible events of December 5, 1986, which led to the death of Malik Oussekine, to which no series has ever been devoted. Focusing on his family's fight for justice, it will plunge into the heart of the 1980s to understand the impact that this tragedy had on French society at the time.

Itto, a young woman from a modest rural background, is slowly adapting to the Moroccan privileged codes of her husband’s family. But when supernatural events put the country in a state of emergency, Itto finds herself separated from her husband and new family. Alone, pregnant and looking for her way back, she finds emancipation.

The Lamberts 10 years after the last installment, as Dalton begins college. (imdb)

To celebrate the bicentennial of the French revolution, an exposition of mannequins representing the deputies brought together in 1789 to discuss the Declaration of the rights of man, is held in the the French National Assembly. The mannequins come to life suddenly and are joined by other historical figures who fought for human rights.

In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to the village (mubi).