Blackboards, by Samira Makhmalbaf

Drawing on elements from contemporary history and timeless mythology, Blackboards is a tragicomedy set in the mountains that separate Iran and Iraq. The film follows two teachers who, in a desolate setting riven with violence, travel through destroyed villages and isolated communities to educate children, all the while carrying a blackboard on their backs. Along their journey, the two meet several groups of children, each enduring, in different ways, the consequences of war. The film, considered a jewel of Iranian cinema, won the Jury Prize at Cannes.

The House is Black, by Forugh Farrokhzad

The first and only film directed by Forugh Farrokhzad, one of the most influential (and controversial) Iranian poets and feminists, The House is Black depicts a series of events in the life of an isolated community of lepers in the north of Iran. Combining documentary images and narrated excerpts from the Old Testament, the Quran and her own poems, the director delicately films the various stages of the disease — casting her gaze on the fragility of the human condition, but also on the beauty and hope that can coexist with suffering.