Cinema of Iran

The Greek Film Archive (aka Tainiothiki) is hosting a tribute to award-winning Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi from Thursday, January 12, to Wednesday, January 18. Screenings will include "The Salesman" (2016), "Le Passe" (2013), "A Separation" (2011) and "About Elly" (2009). Admission costs 5 euros.

Movies by female directors from around the Middle East and North Africa will be the focus of this year's MENAR Festival, the organizers have said.

Between January 14 and 31, the festival will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, with films to be screened at Cinema House, Europe Cinema, G8 Cultural Center, the Czech Center, Pancho Vladigerov Museum and the Cervantes Institute.

The Free Zone Film Festival, one of the most popular movie events in the country, will take place in Belgrade, Nis and Novi Sad from November 5 to 10.

Films included in this year's festival programme will be screened in eight cinemas across the country.

The 43rd annual Belgrade international film festival, FEST 2015, which starts on February 27 and ends on March 8, will feature 90 Serbian premieres, including "Birdman", Alejandro González Iñárritu's film which has received nine Oscar nominations, and Woody Allen's "Magic in the Moonlight".

Jafar Panahi, the Iranian dissident director who is banned from making films by the Iranian state has won this year's Berlinale Golden Bear for his film "Taxi."

In his film, that was described as a masterpiece by the critics, the Iranian director stars as a taxi driver engaging his passengers in dialogue as he drives them through the streets of Tehran.

Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi's latest picture defying an official ban, "Taxi", will premiere Friday at the 65th Berlin film festival, marking a new chapter of his career in the shadows.
      
The 54-year-old's work is celebrated in the world's arthouses but outlawed in Iran where the regime considers his gritty, socially critical productions to be subversive.