Documentaries

Trailers and Info

Little Baluches - Iran

ShirAbad is a neighborhood in the suburb of Zahedan city in Sistan and Baluchistan province of Iran, where its people hope for a better future despite being deprived.
In this movie, we have tried to depict children whose hearts beat for a bright future...

Director - Raya Nasiri

Raya Nasiri was born in 1971 in Tehran.

Educations backgrounds:
- Two acting courses in Free Acting Academy – Tehran/1994-1996
- Fashion Designing in Art courses – Tehran/1995
- Photography course in Youth Cinema Society – Tehran / 1993
- Filmmaking course in Educational Complex of Cinema – Tehran/1991
- Painting courses (Oil Painting) Art Institute – Tehran/1990.

Director:
- Making documentary “little Balouches” - 2024
- Research and filming documentary “Love, Lost” - 2020
- The colour of imagination - 2018
- Earthly Behind 2015 – 2016
- My Daughter, Baran, Farnaz - 2013
- One Moment 2009-2011
- Mechanization of city buses – 2009
- A social documentary of IT learning equipment in schools – 2007
- Red wood - 2006
- Cigarettes harms - 2005

Script writer:
- “Tik Tak” – 2018
- “Beach” - 2018
- “Déjà vu” – 2017
- “The second record” - 2017
- “A secret” - 2017
- “The fifth plate” – 2017
- “Place of death” - 2017 (collaboration with Alireza Aghaeeraad)
- “A place to die” - 2015
- “Metal” - 2013 (collaboration with Ali Molagholipour)
- “Ten stones” – 2010
- “Metal Volume” - 2003
- “Cold Soil” - 2003
- “FIGHT Thou Earthly One” - 2002
- “Leaden City” - 2001

Director Statement

Based on valuable experiences I have had in the field of film-making, I have come to conclusion that I can never deal with my observer's mind and depicting true and bitter images I witness. I have involved for years.
The film "Little Baluches" also started from having a deeper view of its surroundings. A painful challenge to struggle for a better understanding of the geography that at the peak of deprivation in every way, life was its basic pillar and the happiness of its children was its survival. I went to Shirabad. Traveling to a deprived neighborhood full of children who are full of hope for the future, and seeing all their bitter and sweet moments was a difficult time for me to learn and understand.

Screenings/Awards

Fica international Environmental Film Festival two Honorable Mention for  HONORABLE MENTIONS FROM THE OFFICIAL JURY Little Baluches Juvana de Xakriabá and HONORABLE MENTION – YOUNG JURY

Brazil
World premiere

Peloponnisos International documentary Festival

LANTERN & LIGHT INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN'S FILM FESTIVAL

UNIVERSAL KIDS FILM FESTIVAL UNIVERSAL KIDS FILM FESTIVAL

Turkey

Beirut International children and Family Film Festival

The award for best documentary Film from Independent Film Festival SIFFA

Tell me what foot you're dancing on - France

Dis-moi sur quel pied tu danses is a journey to the heart of a rehabilitation service for amputees. In this shared space, where the lack of a limb becomes a driving force and catalyst for desires, patients and carers engage in an intimate dialogue in which the body is both an object of care and poetic expression.
Through 22 sensitive portraits, combining testimonies, dance and poetry, the film explores the way in which each person - whether it is a question of learning to live with their body again or filling this void - questions the desire to get moving again. With the process of making a prosthesis as a common thread, Dis-moi sur quel pied tu danses reveals the power of the vital impulse and of human bonds.
Driven by the choreographic gaze of Philippe Ménard, where the poetry of gesture rubs shoulders with life-saving humor and a liberating shift, the film creates a dialogue between body and absence, technicality and poetry, fragility and resilience. Through a tangle of stories, Dis-moi sur quel pied tu danses highlights often invisible dimensions: what does an amputee hide? What does a missing limb reveal? What stories slip under a white coat, and how much of the imagination populates these trajectories of reconstruction?
Dis-moi sur quel pied tu danses celebrates the ability of each person to reinvent their movements, to find a balance, to stand up and to keep moving forward.

Director - Philippe Ménard

Philippe Ménard is a dancer, choreographer and director.
His artistic career is marked by constant research into movement and its interactions with the world, crossing the fields of contemporary dance, street arts and cinema.
Trained in classical dance at the Angers Conservatory, he continued his apprenticeship in jazz dance in Paris before turning to contemporary dance and improvisation. His practice is enriched by various influences, particularly Japanese martial arts such as Aikido and Aikitaiso.
In 2007, he founded the company pm and created a repertoire combining stage pieces, in situ performances and immersive experiences. He is committed to exploring the tensions between body and society, individual and collective, constraint and liberation.
Far from limiting himself to the stage, Philippe Ménard's work is firmly rooted in the field. He has carried out numerous residencies in hospitals, notably at the psychiatric hospital in Ville-Évrard and the André Boulloche day hospital, as well as with a variety of audiences, from retirement homes to secondary school students, including people with disabilities. These encounters feed artistic research where movement becomes a vector of connection and possibilities.
In parallel to his choreographic work, he is developing a committed cinematographic activity. Since 2008, he has directed and co-directed numerous dance films: short films, documentaries and video-dances. He is particularly interested in the memories of the body and the dreams of dance, capturing moments when gesture becomes language. In 2019, he co-directed with Laurent Fontaine Czaczkes “Ça tourne!”, which retraces his choreographic dialogue with Raphaël, a child with autism spectrum disorder.
His next film project, “Dis-Moi sur Quel Pied tu Danses”, made with patients and caregivers from the Amputee Department of the Coubert Rehabilitation Center, will be released in the fall of 2025.
Today, Philippe Ménard is an associate artist at Le Vaisseau - Fabrique artistique du Centre de Réadaptation de Coubert, at the Théâtre des Ilets - CDN de Montluçon and in residence at the Collectif Scènes 77.
His unique career, between stage and field, body and camera, questions the place of movement in our societies, opening up spaces where the sensitive can be fully shared.

The Window To Venus - Turkey

"Because I was a girl..."
"For a mother to have boundaries means that her children will have boundaries too..."
"...we are all part of the ecosystem. And we all need each other."
"I am not in favor of patriarchal or matriarchal dominance; I prefer equality and solidarity."
"I wanted to feel that I wasn't alone, and it made me feel that way."

Who draws the boundaries of our unlimited potential?
Can women in a patriarchal society transcend the fears and limitations created in their minds through social, cultural, environmental, and individual means? Could the patriarchal structure also be limiting the freedoms of men?
The documentary invites women to look freely through the Window to Venus and to think, speak about gender equality.

Director - Zeliha Karakoca

Born in Ankara, Turkey. She worked as a reporter and magazine writer in a sectoral magazine before university and acted in various private and state theaters in Ankara for five years.

She completed the Radio and Television Programming program at Süleyman Demirel University and graduated from Marmara University's Faculty of Fine Arts, majoring in ''Film Design and Management". She contributed to the university's cinema magazine "Yakın Plan," conducting interviews with directors, and organized public screenings and discussions with directors such as Orhan Oğuz, Yavuz Özkan, and Amat Escalante. She has worked in cinema, commercials, and promotional films as a Director, Assistant Director, Art Assistant, and Operation Manager.

"The Window to Venus" is the director's second personal project that she has chosen to share.

Director Statement

The window became a powerful metaphor for me in this film. As a woman raised in a patriarchal society, I deeply understand what it means to be trapped inside the home. Although the home may seem like a safe place for many women, it can actually become a prison that isolates them from the outside world and silences their voices. The window in the film is the only opening to escape this closed system.

This window does more than offer hope — it is an act of resistance: a silent yet determined rebellion of women against the patriarchal system and the entrenched, normalized social rules it enforces. That’s why I used the window as a symbol both of the dream of freedom and the awareness of existing limitations. To look through it is to see outside and to resist. Through this metaphor, I aimed to initiate a reflection on the thin line between visibility and control, freedom and surveillance.

Screenings/Awards

AFSAD 8th International Short Film Festival

Ankara
Turkey
April 12, 2025
Documentary Film - Special Jury Award

Istanbul International Women Films Festival

İstanbul
Turkey
March 14, 2025
World Premiere
Documentary -Jury Special Award

Artales Film Short Film Screning

Ankara
Turkey
February 19, 2025
Crew and Friends Private Premiere
Special Screening Selection

5th Aizanoi Film Fest

Kütahya
Turkey
September 10, 2025
Selected

12th Lerapetra International Documentary Festival

Lerapetra
Greece
August 10, 2025
European Premier
Award Competition Section

7th Pembroke Taparellli Arts and Film Festival

Los Angeles
United States
November 4, 2025
American Premiere
Currently in Official Selection

Üzüm Bağları Uluslararası Kısa Film Festivali

İzmir
Turkey
September 20, 2025
Currently selected to be included in festival.

Woman, Life, Freedom Film Festival

Brisbane, Queensland 4101
Australia
Currently Nominee in Competition

Thurrock International Film Festival

Grays, Thurrock, Essex
United Kingdom
October 18, 2025
United Kingdom Premiere
Currently in Official Selection

33rd ECOCINE - INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL FILM AND HUMAN RIGHTS FESTIVAL

Belém do Pará
Brazil
October 15, 2025
Currently in Competition

Transformation - Turkey

In the following months after the USA withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, a young Kabul couple, have found their way to the dark and dodgy Afghan neighborhood, Zeytinburnu,in Istanbul. Malika - a transgender woman who together with Mohamed, the love of her life, have fled their families honor killing plan and Taliban's fatal punishments to be able to cultivate their forbidden love for each other, in the hope of achieving a new and better life in Turkey. One day they pass by the young and homeless ”Ilham,” who is sitting on the pavement with nowhere to go, and decide to bring an extra person into their self-made family. Together the three of them are facing poverty, fear of deportation, daily harassment, sexual violence and gender identity crisis. But their self-claimed support towards each other, keeps them fighting for their dreams, whatever it takes. On their tumultuous and challenging journey and transformation through registration for Turkish residency, seeking help in NGOs. As they obtain residency and move into their own place, their circumstances seem to improve from the outside. But unexpected and darker perspectives surface, revealing a surprising twist of perception, when Ilham runs away and claims they have prostituted him out to other men.

Director - Saeed Mayahy, Miriam Carlsen

Saeed Mayahy is an Iranian film director, born in Bushehr South of Iran . He graduated from Bushehr Film School and immediately began working on an animation titled Swan Lake as a director. Over the years, he has produced five documentaries and one animation, earning numerous international awards, including the Audience Award at the Academy Award-qualifying festival, the Chicago International Children's Film Festival.

A common theme in Saeed Mayahy's films is his use of the film medium to explore and depict both hidden and visible boundaries within society. His films often reflect the paradoxical distinctions between life in private and public spheres, and the inevitable enmeshment of individual identity between these conflicting forces.

Saeed Mayahy entered the documentary field with the Don't Worry, Be Happy project, which centers on an erotic illustrator in Iran who gained fame through his erotic art. Saeed followed his subject for almost ten years and he is wrapping up the final shooting session. Subsequently, he embarked on a short documentary titled Finish Line, which depicts an Iranian female athlete who has to face many problems as a woman in Iran

In 2019, Saeed emigrated to Turkey and restarted his career there, producing two documentaries: Game Over and Transformation. These documentaries shed light on the stories of Afghan refugees in Istanbul following the Taliban's rise to power in August 2021. Both films received numerous awards worldwide, with Game Over being recognized as the Best National Turkish Documentary of 2023

Director Statement

We believe, creativity always lives somewhere in everyone, but the trick is not to force it into a certain outcome. Rather, to focus your energy to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when, what we expected to happen, did not happen. While making a documentary, you have to know, you are not the superior director to the story you are telling. Life is. Everything might change. The story is a fragment of a reality, not a pre-written script. You have to stay humble and be ready for what life throws at your characters, and work with that. You are not creating fiction, and there will be limits, you can not cross, if you want to maintain the filter between the film and the experienced reality as thin as possible. You must be aware, that a new happening, can change everything.

For example, a piece of footage may at first seem insignificant, and just to discard. But as the story progresses, what happens in life, might suddenly make that very same footage become of the highest importance in retrospective.

We work with these hundreds of fragments from the characters' life in order to rebuild a new entity. It is like putting together a mosaic. It might take a long time for us to see how we can put the pieces together the best possible way. What motive we create with the pieces. New pieces might be added. The motive might change over and over, before the final picture appears.
We start with something, and sometimes we destroy everything that we've made for the purpose to get to the core place where we started from.

Trauma: The New Epidemic - Ethiopia/US

"Trauma: The New Epidemic" follows the journey of Dr. Abiy and Dr. Solomon, two of six orthopedic trauma surgeons serving the entire country of Ethiopia, as they take part in an international physician fellowship program in Kansas City, Kansas. Together with Dr. Heddings of the KU School of Medicine, they take on the challenge of combating the trauma epidemic in their homeland. This film is a moving portrayal of the need of global collaborative medical innovation, and how trying to solve problems on a global scale can sometimes lead to unexpected outcomes here at home.

Directors - Matthew Jacobson, Backer Hamada

Matthew Jacobson is a Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Kansas. He earned his M.F.A. in Film and Video Production from the University of Southern California. Before joining academia, he worked in the Los Angeles film and video industry, collaborating with notable directors and actors. Since 1999, Matt has been a faculty member at KU, where he teaches various film production courses, including Experimental Film, Music Video Production, and Cinematography. Matt Jacobson has more than 50 feature film and video credits, including two Sundance Film Festival features, Kevin Willmott's CSA: Confederate States of America, and Bukowski: Born Into This, directed by John Dullaghan.

Backer Hamada, a first-time director, was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas, and graduated in 2023 from the University of Kansas with a degree in Film and Media Production. As a student, Backer served on KJHK's Executive Board as the Video Director, worked for KU Marketing as a PA, and did various contract work. He now serves as the Director of Marketing for IOTC where he built the organization’s marketing department through media production, social media, web design, and fundraising. Backer is passionate about using his media abilities to present unbiased global perspectives and create meaningful impact.

Screenings/Awards

KC Film Festival International

Kansas City, MO
United States
March 30, 2025
Kansas City Premiere
Audience Choice Award

Free State Festival

Lawrence, Kansas
United States
June 27, 2025
Official Selection

Uplift Film Festival

Webb City and Joplin, MO
United States
January 10, 2025
Best Documentary Short