Moslem Themes

In 11th-century Persia, a surgeon's apprentice disguises himself as a Jew to study at a school that does not admit Christians.

When the movie opens, a woman is recalling the events that molded her perspective on the world. Years ago, her husband, a wealthy Western-educated landowner, challenged tradition by providing her with schooling, and inviting her out of the seclusion in which married women were kept, to the consternation of more conservative relatives. Meeting her husband's visiting friend from college, a leader of an economic rebellion against the British, she takes up his political cause, despite her husbands warnings. As the story progresses, the relationship between the woman and the visitor becomes more than platonic, and the political battles, pitting rich against poor and Hindu against Moslem, turn out not to be quite as simple as she had first thought.

An Islamic world tour is documented here by visits to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnia, and Qatar, to highlight events post 9/11, including footage taken a few years before. The film above all endeavors to shed light on the process leading young men to the radical choice of self-sacrifice, becoming human bombs. The directors of the film traveled for ten years throughout these countries under heavy Moslem influence, and met with clan leaders, mullahs, and other strict followers of the Koran.

An Armenian photographer's archives, whose ancestors introduced photography to the ancient city of Tabriz in 1900, could be in jeopardy. There are over thousand photographs of historic significance in his archives, which reflect the lives of the Moslem and Christian communities of Tabriz. Therefore, no child to pass it on to, the photographer needs to protect his national treasure.

Four mountain-climbers with different spiritual backgrounds meet coincidently on top of a mountain in Italy. Then a bizarre woman appears...

Four women--Selma Dejani, a Palestinian Moslem; Wadad Shihade, a Palestinian Christian; Olga Elkind, a Jew from a prominent Zionist family; and Sharona Aharo, a Jew from Tel Aviv--roommates at an Anglican boarding school in Jerusalem in 1939, meet 50 years later for a reunion.