In this sentimental and sometimes humorous story, a hardworking rural ostrich farmer, Karim (Reza Naji, awarded best actor at the Berlin International Film Festival), is fired from his job and must move his family to Tehran to look for work.  Due to a case of mistaken identity, he finds opportunity behind the wheel of a gypsy taxi.  The sudden exposure to more affluent people and their material preoccupations starts to transform Karim's generous and honest nature, much to the distress of his wife and daughters.  It is up to those closest to him to help him remember the values he once cherished.  This year's Iranian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. 

Selected Filmography: Baduk (92), The Children of Heaven (97), The Color of Paradise (99), The Willow Tree (05).

A nuanced portrait of a religious housewife in distress, As Simple As That offers a rare, realistic depiction of a middle class Iranian woman.  Put-upon Tanareh has a problem common to all sorts of women world-wide: she's suffering form a stressful routine so centered on husband, kids and home that she's completely lost any sense of herself, and has fallen into a deep depression.  Her self-absorbed husband is an engineer who is so busy that he doesn't bother to tell her that he's changed the number of their joint bank account; their two materialistic children are hurtfully unappreciative of her efforts to cook, clean and coach them.  The preparations for her neighbor's wedding lead her, inevitably, to a reassessment of her life.

Filmography: The Child and the Soldier (00), So Close, So Far (04), Under the Moonlight (05).

Two young men from an Iranian village who work in an animal market are given a seemingly simple task: to deliver a large, wounded cow to Tehran.  As we follow the struggling pair on their panoramic cross-country journey, Karkhani shows the divide between rural and urban life in modern day Iran, while finding moments of gentle humor and stinging truth.  Rather than dwelling on the overtly political, Loose Rope tells a wonderfully human tale of two wandering souls experiencing the wide-eyed wonder of the big city and the simple pleasures of smiling girls, overly officious traffic wardens and bemused crowds of spectators.  An opening coda informing viewers that no animals were harmed in the making of this film gives us a portentous glimpse of what awaits.

First feature film

"In this beautiful and sometimes mischievous homage to the weird and wonderful city of Tehran, the curious contradictions of Iranian history are playfully exposed.  Bakhshi constructs a century-spanning postmodern portrait of a metropolis turning megalopolis, increasingly an unsustainable urban mess of pollution, inadequate infrastructure and overcrowding.  Using an energetic mix of archival footage, unconventional photography and sometimes asynchronous music and sound, Bakhshi considers the aesthetic and cultural values that have shaped old and new Tehran.  The chaotic impulse of the film's construction is a fitting parallel to the development of a city that has haphazardly survived oppressors, wars and internal revolutions." --Hotdocs Festival.

Filmography: Lost Windows (04).