Best movies like 316

In 2009, Iranian Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari was covering Iran's volatile elections for Newsweek. One of the few reporters living in the country with access to US media, he made an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in a taped interview with comedian Jason Jones. The interview was intended as satire, but if the Tehran authorities got the joke they didn't like it - and it would quickly came back to haunt Bahari when he was rousted from his family home and thrown into prison.

A young orphan named Amiro lives alone in an abandoned tanker in the Iranian port city of Abadan. He survives by shining shoes, selling water, and collecting deposit bottles. Although he sometimes finds himself at odds with both adults and competing older kids, he finds solace in dreams about departing cargo ships and airplanes—and by running.

After twelve years of imprisonment by their own parents, two sisters are finally released by social workers to face the outside world for the first time.

On a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.

Zohre's shoes are gone; her older brother Ali lost them. They are poor, there are no shoes for Zohre until they come up with an idea: they will share one pair of shoes. School awaits.

In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.

A man contemplates life and compares it to a pear tree in his yard which stops producing fruit.

Forced out of their apartment due to dangerous works on a neighboring building, Emad and Rana move into a new flat in the center of Tehran. An incident linked to the previous tenant will dramatically change the young couple’s life.

A yellow cab is driving through the vibrant and colourful streets of Tehran. Very diverse passengers enter the taxi, each candidly expressing their views while being interviewed by the driver who is no one else but the director Jafar Panahi himself. His camera placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio captures the spirit of Iranian society through this comedic and dramatic drive…

A sensation when released in 1999 in Iran, Two Women charts the lives of two promising architecture students over the course of the first turbulent years of the Islamic Republic. Tahimine Milani creates this scathing portrait of those traditions - aided by official indifference - which conspire to trap women and stop them from realizing their full potential; the inclusion of frank depictions of domestic violence was hailed by many as a breakthrough in dealing with a long taboo subject.

Hamoon's wife is leaving him. He is also unsuccessfully trying to finish his Ph.D. thesis. He is forced to reexamine his life. In a series of flashbacks and dreams, Hamoon tries to figure out what he did wrong.

The Glass Agency is the story of a war veteran living in post war Iran. It depicts veterans who are suffering from social problems after the war. Society does not understand them and the standard social norms are not in harmony with their personalities.

Tells the story of seven Iranian transgender individuals living in Tehran who live pieces of their own lives on the screen.

An official is sent from his home in Tehran to hear the final appeal of a woman sentenced to death, a political prisoner. The official's wife of nearly 20 years, Fereshteh Samimi, writes him a letter to read when he reaches the hotel - the story of her student days during the revolution of 1978. We see the story in flashbacks as he reads: she leaves her province on scholarship, joins a Communist youth group, avoids arrest, and comes under the sway of a suave older man, Roozbeh Javid, a literary-magazine editor. As she tells her husband about the hidden half of her life, Fereshteh asks that he listen to the woman facing execution, a woman and therefore one of Iran's hidden half.

Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.

"Mother married a photo of Father," says director Firouzeh Khosrovani in the opening of this deeply personal documentary. She's not speaking metaphorically though. Her mother Tayi literally married a portrait of Hossein in Teheran -he was in Switzerland studying radiology and was unable to travel back to his homeland for the wedding. The event illustrates the abyss that still exists in their marriage: Hossein is a secular progressive and Tayi a devout, traditional Muslim.

For Hussein, a pizza delivery driver, the imbalance of the social system is thrown in his face wherever he turns. One day when his friend, Ali, shows him the contents of a lost purse, Hussein discovers a receipt of payment and cannot believe the large sum of money someone spent to purchase an expensive necklace. He knows that his pitiful salary will never be enough to afford such luxury. Hussein receives yet another blow when he and Ali are denied entry to an uptown jewelry store because of their appearance. His job allows him a full view of the contrast between rich and poor. He motorbikes every evening to neighborhoods he will never live in, for a closer look at what goes on behind closed doors. But one night, Hussein tastes the luxurious life, before his deep feelings of humiliation push him over the edge.

A visual social examination in the form of ten conversations between a driving woman and her various pick-ups and hitchhikers.

Lantouri is the name of a gang that mugs people in broad daylight on the streets of Tehran and breaks into homes in the city’s rich northern district. The gang also kidnaps children from families who have become wealthy through corruption and embezzlement of state funds. The film begins with the confessions of individual gang members. Sociologists, human rights activists and political hardliners also have their say. Gang member Pasha runs amok because Maryam, a socially committed, self-confident journalist, does not reciprocate his feelings. The badly injured young woman demands lex talionis – the law, applicable in Iran, of ‘an eye for an eye’.

Mickey O'Hara is a committed IRA member but his days of freedom fighting are long gone, leaving him peddling drugs and disenchanted with "the cause." When a deal goes wrong, things take a dramatic turn for Mickey, who is forced to kill his partner. Marked for death, Mickey flees to LA, determined to make a fresh start and leave his violent past behind. When a close friend runs afoul of some powerful drug dealers, Mickey temporarily resorts to his old ways to help him get out of trouble. However, instead of making things better, Mickey unwittingly sets off a chain of events that reawakens the ghosts of his past and threatens to destroy everything he holds dear. Written by Trinity Filmed Entertainment

Omid happily celebrates his birthday with his wife and her family at a beautiful villa near the Caspian Sea. A phone call from Omid's ex-wife puts the festivities on hold as she drops a bombshell that threatens to unravel the new life he is trying to lead. Written by Iranian playwright Mohammad Yaghoubi, this insightful drama tackles marital and social issues with sharp dialogue and knowing humour.

Based on the book “The Legend of Mickey Tussler”, this film follows the story of eighteen-year-old Mickey Tussler, who lives on a farm with his father and mother and who has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism. But he can throw apples at an amazing speed. When a chance meeting occurs with the baseball manager of the semi-pro team the River Rats, from Clayton, Ohio, Mickey gets a chance to pitch for the team and to prove to his father he can do more than live hidden away on the family farm, taking care of his pig Oscar.

Eli and Daniel, two Korean American brothers who own a struggling women's shoe store, have an unlikely friendship with 11-year-old Kamilla. On the first day of the 1992 L.A. riots, the trio must defend their store—and contemplate the meaning of family, their personal dreams and the future.

A psychiatric hospital is turned upside down when a mysterious drifter is admitted and assigned to room 316. Known only as John Doe, the other patients believe that he bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ.

A remote brick manufacture factory produces bricks in an ancient way. Many families with different ethnicities work in the factory and the boss seems to hold the key to solving their problems. Forty-year-old Lotfollah, who has been born on-site, is the factory supervisor and acts as go-between for the workers and the boss. Boss has Lotfollah gather all the workers in front of his office. He wants to talk to them about the shutdown of the factory. All matters now to Lotfollah is to keep Sarvar unharmed, the woman he has been in love with for a long time.

I'm not Angry! is the story of Navid, a starred and expelled university student who - while trying to provide the least requirements of a normal life -, tries not to get angry when he is faced with the immoralities prevalent in the society, and does all he can to keep his love, Setareh.

The story opens in Balochistan, in a small, scarcely ‘wired’ village bordering Iran and Afghanistan. Ahmad is an idealistic teacher in exile, educating the local community; his partner Niloofar, however, has spent time in jail in Tehran for the very same offence against the State. The disaccord between them is not only social but also personal. Ahmad's destiny collides with that of a family fleeing the Taliban; soon the intricate divisions of age and gender within that group will trigger other problems and entanglements – including a 'lovers on the run' intrigue that fleetingly recalls Murnau's classic Tabu (1931).

Award-winning Iranian filmmaker Rakshan Banietemad ends her eight-year hiatus from feature filmmaking with this ingenious, mosaic-like narrative, which knits together the stories of seven characters to create a microcosm of Iranian working-class society.

A preacher without resources spends his days reciting Bible verses. One day he meets a young jobless girl who wanders on Hollywood Boulevard. An impossible love story begins.

Squatters live on a mothballed oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. The children attend a school on board; men harvest scrap metal and old oil in the hull; women keep house and raise children and Captain Nemat runs it all with an iron hand. We follow a lad who rescues fish trapped in the hull, an old man who stares at the sun, the idealistic teacher, and Ahmad, the Captain's assistant who has fallen in love with a young woman whose father wants to marry her to someone of means. What future has this sinking city?

Tuba works daily at a grueling textile factory in Iran, returning home every night to deal with the rest of her problematic family, which includes: a pregnant daughter whose husband beats her regularly; a teenage son, who's been getting into trouble due to his burgeoning career in radical politics; and an older son who goes to great lengths--such as attempting to sell the family's meager house--in order to get an engineering job in Japan as a means of getting out of Iran.

The struggle to survive, for a generation, torn between wanting to leave its country, yet bound by blood to home.

Crayton Jefferson is a small town sheriff who finds that routine missing-persons investigation leads to a deeper mystery. He begins a life or death struggle with an ancient evil that threatens all he holds dear, and tests his will to survive.

In a bus travelling to Mashhad few people and a prisoner are together. But when the prisoner manage to escape and hold them hostages they all trapped in the middle of a desert and must try to save their life.

The fates of a madman, a homeless woman, a print shop worker and a playboy are intertwined in the days leading up to Persian New Year. Toofan, an uncategorisable film which moves freely between horror and comedy; documentary, musical and sci-fi, was the first production of Khachikian’s own studio, Azhir Film. After the censor banned Khachikian from making a film about the first serial killer of the modern era in Iran, he turned to one of his own stories, exploring his preferred themes of compassion and evil. Shot both in the studio and on location, it features a memorable sequence of Bonfire Wednesday and a ruin which was rumoured to be a former Qajar era torture dungeon.