Author: Bijan Tehrani

Last Stop 174 starts in Rio de Janeiro, 1983. Marisa, a drug addicted mother in her early twenties is breastfeeding her three- month-old baby, Alessandro in her shack. The door bursts opened and drug lord Meleca comes in to collect a drug debt. Because Marisa doesn’t have the money, the baby is yanked from her arms and taken to be raised by Meleca. Cast out of the community and homeless, all Marisa has left only is the memory of son Alessandro. Ten years later, on the other side of the city, Sandro, 10 years old, sees the corpse of his…

Niloofar is a twelve-year-old Iraqi girl whose dream is to read and write in a village where education is only for boys. While assisting her midwife mother during a delivery, Niloofar meets a woman who allows her to secretly study. In the meantime, Niloofar’s father arranges her marriage to an older man once she becomes a woman. Horrified by this notion, Niloofar does everything in her power to postpone her first periods. When destiny catches up with her, she hides her womanhood from her community to pursue her dream. Until one day, the truth is revealed. Rather than live in…

The Necessities of Life deals with an essential question: “What does a human being need to live?” The film uses the 1950s-era tuberculosis epidemic in the Far North as its starting point. The spread of the disease forced many Inuit to go to various Canadian cities for treatment. Tivii (Natar Ungalaaq, Atanarjuat: the Fast Runner) is taken to a sanatorium in Quebec City. Uprooted, far from his loved ones and faced with a completely alien world, he finds himself unable to communicate with anyone. When his nurse, Carole (Éveline Gélinas) realizes that Tivii’s illness is not the most serious threat…

No One’s Son is the story of Ivan, a 36-year old ex-rock singer and a disillusioned war veteran who has lost both legs in the recent Croatian Homeland War. His father, Izidor, has been a well-known political prisoner in the former Yugoslavia, and he is now standing as an independent candidate for the Croatian Parliament. Then a face from the past re-appears: an impoverished Serbian refugee called Simo, who has recently returned to town. As an ex-communist official, Simo imprisoned Izidor decades ago. He knows certain facts about Izidor that could destroy his reputation and wreck his political campaign. Simo…

On a hot summer day in Poland, a group of people walks through a run-down steel mill. They are actors, from a theater in Prague, and they’re here to rehearse for a performance to be held in the space the next day. There are a few workers still on the job at this mill, the only living creatures left. They pay the actors little attention at first, pre-occupied with a personal tragedy: the day before, the son of a maintenance-man fell from a catwalk and seriously injured his spine. Their interest is in his fate. Amid remnants of old machinery…

The story of Under The Bombs happens during a cease-fire in the Lebanon-Israel conflict of 2006. A Christian taxi driver brings an untraditional Shiite woman from Beirut to the heart of the conflict in the country’s south. While they scour the rubble of local towns for her son, who was sent to live with her traditional family while she was staying with her husband in Dubai, they discover that despite their very different backgrounds they have much in common. And during their trip through the desolate countryside, the two travelers develop a deep bond as a response to the death…

Tricks tells the story of Stefek, a 6 year old boy who challenges fate. He believes that the chain of events he sets in motion will help him get closer to his father, who abandoned his mother. His sister Elka, 17, helps him learn how to “bribe” fate with small sacrifices. Tricks and coincidences eventually bring the father to the mother’s doorstep, but things go wrong. In despair Stefek tries his good luck with the most risky of his tricks…Andrzej Jakimowski, director of Tricks, began his career by directing short features and documentaries and co-founded the Association of Artists and…

Ishaan Awasthi is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate; colours, fish, dogs and kites are just not important in the world of adults, who are much more interested in things like homework, marks and neatness. Ishaan just cannot seem to get anything right in class. And so, he gets into far more trouble than his parents can handle, and is packed off to a boarding school to ‘be disciplined’. Things are no different at his new school, and Ishaan has to contend with the added trauma of separation from his family. …

Iska Journey follows the toil of a twelve year-old girl living on the streets in a coal mining town in Eastern Europe. The story follows her fight for survival in her small town until the her experience with the Black Sea, where she becomes a victim of human trafficking. Maria Varga plays a role almost identical to her own life and her childish naivety and vitality lend a tragic charm to this story. When Iska is taken to an orphanage and asked if her parents hurt her, she simply responds, ”Well, they do not beat me every day.” Csaba Bollók…

Independent producer and International Film Festival Programmer Helen duToit began her career in Vancouver, Canada in the early nineties, working in the art departments of numerous feature films and as production manager on the first 100% 3D computer animated TV series in the world: the groundbreaking ReBoot! In the mid-90’s Helen relocated to Toronto to serve as Programmer for the Perspective Canada section of the Toronto International Film Festival. During this three year tenure, she also produced six short films, including the Genie Award nominated short film Sshhh….by Scott Smith. In 2000 she left her post at TIFF to produce…