In the early 2000s, a handful of peasant women from the mountains of southern Turkey formed a theater group, which later became the subject of the documentary, The Play. The women acted out their own life stories in the village, and the play changed their lives. Now, they take to the road with an adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear,traveling the dusty, dangerous roads to the farthest-flung mountain villages where there isn’t even running water. On the road, their lives merge with the world of King Lear and become bound up with "the good and the bad", "the young…

A short narrative film that takes place in war-torn Yemen and follows a young deaf girl, Saleemah who has one major love in this world; her camera which her brother Aqeel introduced her to. Aqeel works as a news reporter and is unable to take her out to film because he is preoccupied covering the war. Frustrated, Saleemah wanders out of the house during an impending air strike. To make matters worse, she loses her hearing aids.  

“I see everything,” she says, as if it was a curse. Brilliant sunshine, clear blue skies. The sea is calm, framed by a piece of railing. Buzzing voices. A peaceful moment if it weren’t for the fact that the sea is standing upright, vertical, like a waterfall. A rush of images, twirling, upside down, jolting. People in the boat, in the water, screams, life jackets, emergency whistles. Fluorescent orange, geometrical shapes cast by the sun. There’s no horizon any more, no sky, no up or down, only deepness and nothing to hold on to. Even time’s flow comes…

Maia, a single mother, lives in Montreal with her teenage daughter, Alex. On Christmas Eve, they receive an unexpected delivery: notebooks, tapes, and photos Maia sent to her best friend from 1980’s Beirut. Maia refuses to open the box or confront its memories, but Alex secretly begins diving into it. Between fantasy and reality, Alex enters the world of her mother’s tumultuous, passionate adolescence during the Lebanese civil war, unlocking mysteries of a hidden past.  

Maryam is an ambitious young doctor working in a small town clinic in Saudi Arabia. Despite her qualifications, she has to earn the respect of male colleagues and acceptance from her patients every day. After Maryam is prevented from traveling to Dubai in search of a better job, a bureaucratic mixup leads her to stumble on the application for her local city elections and she decides to run. With her musician father away on tour playing the first public concerts allowed in the Kingdom in decades, Maryam enlists her two younger sisters…

Visual artist Asya follows the politics of her Middle East homeland on TV while enjoying a chic Manhattan lifestyle of parties, supermodels and limos. But when a childhood friend disappears, Asya suspects a CIA abduction and – to her new boyfriend's bemusement – sets out to crack the conspiracy. British-American director Zeina Durra fuses dry comedy with alluring political drama, brilliantly depicting the everyday paranoia of post-9/11 America.   Please note this film is currently only available in the UK and audiences outside will not be able to access it. When you purchase the film on demand you will have…

In a documentary with a dash of fiction, we enter the mind of the elderly Hiam, a Palestinian woman from Nazareth. We see her at the hairdresser's, waxing her upper lip and shuffling her way to bed. The mundanity of everyday life acquires extra layers of meaning because the filmmaker Juna Suleiman-her granddaughter-accompanies many scenes with internal monologues from Hiam. Gradually we gain a picture of her past: her marriage, her family and her wealthy brother, who bears the remarkable first name of Mussolini. Hiam's life is nearly over. Just a few threads are left to connect this lonely and…

While boxing and jazz rely on improvisation, they both have a deep sense of resilience. Hala, an Arab American female boxer in New York City, and Kendrick, an African American jazz musician, improvise their way through a passive aggressive America. She's Miles Davis in boxing gloves and he's Muhammad Ali refusing to live a lie.

​​When British aid worker Hana returns to the ancient city of Luxor, she comes across Sultan, a talented archeologist and former lover. As she wanders, haunted by the familiar place, she struggles to reconcile the choices of the past with the uncertainty of the present.   Please note this film is currently only available in the UK and audiences outside will not be able to access it. When you purchase the film on demand you will have access for 48 hours.   

On the day of her release from a psychiatric facility, Mira returns to her mother’s home in Brooklyn for her grandmother’s birthday, only to discover that her sister has told the family that she has been on a trip to Florida. Tallahassee is the portrayal of a young woman’s re-entry into the world, a meditation on the enormous task of life after grief. Framed in the context of diaspora, Tallahassee grants a glimpse into the struggles of mental illness, an issue often silenced and pathologized in Arab culture.

When sharp science student Asli meets charismatic Saeed in the mid 90’s, it’s love at first sight. The lovers marry, and Asli swears to be true to Saeed and never betray his secrets. Their future looks bright, but as the twenty-first century dawns, Saeed makes a decision that will not only shatter Asli’s dreams, but shake the whole world to the core. Please note this film is currently only available in the UK and audiences outside will not be able to access it. When you purchase the film on demand you will have access for 48 hours. 

This artist film by Meriem Bennani is a playful, humorous and moving portrait staged as a modern reality TV programme about the daily life of four Moroccan women.

Bennani both celebrates and exposes the private lives of these women – from her own family members to Chaabi pop divas. Ghariba is at once intimate and whimsical, playing with the aesthetic codes of soap operas and documentary films. In her works Bennani uses digital effects and off-beat humour, leaning towards the absurd, to create a distinctive aesthetic.

The word ghariba means stranger in Arabic,…

Parev Mama (Hello Mother) follows Natalie, who is a lesbian, as she is faced with the repercussions of her traditional Armenian mother when coming home late after a night out with her girlfriend. The lead is on a journey of truth, coming to terms with being honest with her mother about her sexuality, and living her life for herself outside the constraints of her culture's expectations. The short film explores the challenges of what it is like being caught between the traditions of an Armenian family that thinks marrying a man is the objective, and living one’s truth…