Strange Time (1997)

The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.

As Islamic morality squads stage arbitrary raids in Tehran and as fundamentalists seize hold of the universities, Azar Nafisi, an inspired teacher, secretly gathers six of her most committed female students to read forbidden western classics. Unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, they soon removed their veils, their stories intertwining with the novels they read: just like the heroines of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James or Jane Austen, the women in Nafisi’s living room dare to dream, hope and love as we experience the complexity of the lives of individuals facing political, moral and personal siege.

A shell-shocked Afghanistan war hero named Ivan Skryabin (Mikhail Skryabin) spends his days stoking the fire in a giant coal furnace. When he isn’t tending the flames, he keeps busy with other activities. He works on a historical novel. His adult daughter Sasha (Aida Tumutova) comes to visit. Local kids come to gaze at the flames. Gangsters, including a former Army sergeant (Aleksandr Mosin) and a sniper known as Bison (Yuri Matveyev), drop by to add special kindling to the fire.

Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.

A 21-year-old reformed gangster's devotion to his family and his future is put to the test when he is released from prison and returns to his old stomping grounds in Watts, Los Angeles.

Drama telling the story of Blue, a young man of Jamaican descent living in Brixton in 1980, as he hangs out with his friends, fronts a dub sound system, loses his job, struggles with family problems and has his friendships tested by racism.

During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.

94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.

Back from a tour of duty, Kelli struggles to find her place in her family and the rust-belt town she no longer recognizes.

The story of a gang of children growing up in a community of banished criminals, in a forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union. This community rejects the world outside. The only law it obeys… is its own. Against this backdrop two best friends, Kolyma and Gagarin, gradually become fierce enemies as they find themselves on opposite sides of the strict code of honour of the ‘honest criminal’ brotherhood.