Best movies like Midday Event

In Iran, since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women are no longer allowed to sing in public as soloists - at least in front of men. Defying censorship and taboos, the young composer Sara Najafi is determined to organize an official concert for solo female singers. In order to support their fight, Sara and her friends invite three French female singers, Elise Caron, Jeanne Cherhal and Emel Mathlouthi, to join them in Tehran and collaborate on their musical project, re-opening a musical bridge between Europe and Iran. Are they going to succeed and finally be gathered in Tehran, sing together, on stage and without restrictions, and to open a door towards a new freedom of women in Iran ?

Chronicles the true story behind Argo’s Hollywood embellishments by looking at the efforts of the venerable Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, who personally sheltered six American diplomats in the operation that became known as "the Canadian Caper."

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.

As the Iranian revolution reaches a boiling point, a CIA 'exfiltration' specialist concocts a risky plan to free six Americans who have found shelter at the home of the Canadian ambassador.

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.

Samad is nobody’s fool. The narcotics officer has seen his share of a drug dealer’s lies and games, and his patience has come to run thin. While searching for the infamous drug baron Nasser Khakzad, he and his colleague Hamid scour the streets of Tehran, turning an overcrowded prison on its head. With his rough and dubious approach, Samad finally manages to find the criminal’s whereabouts – but things do not quite go according to plan...

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.

Also known as 'The Confessional', another of Pete Walkers's critiques of institutional hypocrisy, in which a troubled young girl goes to confession at the local church. Unfortunately, the sexually frustrated priest she confesses to becomes obsessed with her. At first, the priest stalks the girl, but later it is revealed that he will stop at nothing, including blackmail and murder, just to get close to her.

An American is kidnapped while attending a conference in Cairo and ends up in prison in Iran on spying charges. His wife goes to Iran, determined to get him out.

An Iranian-born teenager living in suburban New Jersey thinks of herself as simply an American until anti-Iranian sentiment erupts in her community after American hostages are held in Iran.

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…

Inspirational true story of Iranian dancer Afshin Ghaffarian, who risked his life for his dream to become a dancer despite a nationwide dancing ban.

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.

Arash is an Iranian academic who lives in the West. He returns to Iran to teach in Shiraz, a city far from Tehran where his mother lives. Drawn into a series of domestic and financial dramas, he faces a country that is now alien to him. Following the death of his father and the discovery of what his “respectable family” has become, he is forced to make choices.

Haji is severely traumatized by the war with Iraq. Back from the front, he's unable to adapt to civilian life. Despite family opposition, his fiancée stands by him as together they challenge both the authority of family and state to lead their own lives.

Ghodrat Samadi wants to become a member of parliament, but he has a reputation for recklessness and taking arbitrary action. Deciding his best course of action is negotiating with assorted parties and politicians, none take him seriously until he's connected to a single, notorious incident.

A politically complacent middle-aged man and a young pro-democracy activist debate about the future of their country while hiding from the police, in this fascinating drama that blends scripted scenes with on-the-ground footage from Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution.

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.

Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers.

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.

This is the story of Tehran from the Qajar time (middle of 19th century) to today. Tehran has become a metropolis from a small village, now a developed city with many social problems.

When a young girl's mother doesn't meet her after school, she tries to navigate the streets of Tehran by herself.

Marzieh is a young female actress living in Tehran. The authorities ban her theatre work and, like all young people in Iran, she is forced to lead a secret life in order to express herself artistically. At an underground rave, she meets Iranian born Saman, now an Australian citizen, who offers her a way out of her country and the possibility of living without fear.

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’.

Based on the true story of the Azari war hero, Satar Khan, during the time of the Constitutional Revolution. The story follows Satar and Heidar as they join another hero Bagher Khan.

The story is about a family of three brothers and a sister in the suburbs of the city's poverty. Their elder brother owns a drug-producing kitchen and presides over the group, like a shepherd for sheep.

Two families who live in neighborhood in south of Tehran have different looks to life. These differences make some troubles for both.

In Tehran 1916 during first world war a group of patriots make a punishment committee to punish the traitors. With the lead of Abolfatooh Mirza, Reza Tofangchi begins the assassinations.

In this adaptation of the critically acclaimed debut novel by Iranian American author Dalia Sofer, a secular Jewish family is caught up in the maelstrom of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Kamran and Moluk, middle-aged siblings, live penniless in the family's Tehran mansion, selling furniture to pay expenses. Their brother, who owns the house, has died suddenly, and his widow, Forugh, is coming from the provinces to visit. Kamran writes an elaborate script and hires a troupe of five actors to be the household servants. The purpose of the charade, which will seem real to Forugh, is to drive her mad, perhaps to suicide, so that Kamran and Moluk can inherit the house. The play is elaborate, Forugh is fooled and terrified, and the police can't substantiate her wild claims. She appears insane to them. All is headed for the mysterious last act.

Ziba and three of her prison cohorts, recently released from a Tehran prison, settle in an out of town doctor's house posing as house sitters and embark on a get rich quick scheme. They plan to mug the lecherous men who give a ride to ladies waiting at street sides for a pickup, which was- and is, to some extent, now- how some prostitutes found work back in the time in Iran. The film portrays the characters as well as the social origins of these men, and as it progresses, explores the backgrounds of these women.

Police investigates a case to find and eliminate a group of political objectors to Iranian regime before 1978 revolution.

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.

Banafsheh, a young prostitute who has fled with a man to the seaside in hope of starting a new life has to return to her profession as she learns about the betrayal of her lover. Penniless and emotionally broken, she also has to bear with the taunts of the other girls and the threats of the roughneck patron of the house, Mammad who unfailingly refer to his dagger to consolidate his supremacy. In fact it was Mammad who ordered the man to rob Banafsheh of her money and abandon her. Banafsheh apparently has not learnt her lesson, as she trusts her next customer and falls in love with him. Her new lover , Abbas, is a truck driver who received his nickname for his habit of constantly lying, but it seems that he gives it a break when promises Banafsheh to get a house of their own...