Kandahar
A name and place the world knows well now but had not heard of at the time this film began production. Kandahar takes us into the heart of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, following an expatriate journalist on her journey to save her sister. Directed by that Iranian master of beautiful and provocative cinematic imagery, Moshen Makhmalbaf.

The Circle
Banned at home, Best Film at the 2000 Venice Film Festival, The Circle traces the plight of women under a radical Islamic regime whose many restrictions are supposed to protect the very people who end up suffering the most: the women. Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon) directs.

Close-Up
Astonishing combination of documentary and fiction: lonely man gets in trouble for impersonating a film director, starring actual participants. Directed by the acclaimed and highly-influential Abbas Kiarostami (The Taste of Cherry).

Leila
A tragedy of love and tradition: after discovering she cannot have children, Leila is caught up in her own confused desires and her mother-in-law's obsessions when she helps her husband find a second wife to bear his family a much wanted heir.

Hamoun
Also from Dariush Mehrjui, a philosophical black comedy that brings globalization and fundmentalism into collision with good old-fashioned existential crisis: Hamid Hamoun, a writer married to an artist, is having a marriage breakdown that is either cause or effect of a more fundmental breakdown; Lynchian nightmares and Kierkegaardian musings.

The Color of Paradise
Iranian director most successful in the West, Majid Majidi, (Children of Heaven, Baran) offers a gorgeous story of a blind boy who sees more than anyone else.

Between Jihad & McWorld

Ghost World
Two alienated young women seek to find their way amid the suburban mini- malled wasteland that is McWorld.

The Merchants of Cool
PBS FRONTLINE special on how corporations co-opt youth subcultures.

Under One Sky: Arab Women in North America Talk about the Hijab
To wear or not to wear Muslim head-coverings: it's more complicated than you'd think.

Shroud of Silence
Documentary short on women under the Taliban.

Reviving Ophelia
Mary Pipher on popular culture as shaper of identity, especially girls'.

2002 Showcase Films and Schedule