Stories of Transformation Film Festival

A Beirut beauty salon becomes a treasured meeting place for several generations of women, from various walks of life, to talk, seek advice and confide in one another.

Persepolis is the poignant story of a young girl coming-of-age in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It is through the eyes of precocious and outspoken nine-year-old Marjane that we see a people's hopes dashed as fundamentalists take power — forcing the veil on women and imprisoning thousands. Clever and fearless, she outsmarts the "social guardians" and discovers punk, ABBA and Iron Maiden. Yet when her uncle is senselessly executed and as bombs fall around Tehran in the Iran/Iraq war the daily fear that permeates life in Iran is palpable. As she gets older, Marjane's boldness causes her parents to worry over her continued safety. And so, at age fourteen, they make the difficult decision to send her to school in Austria. Vulnerable and alone in a strange land, she endures the typical ordeals of a teenager. In addition, Marjane has to combat being equated with the religious fundamentalism and extremism she fled her country to escape. Over time, she gains acceptance, and even experien

Set in a remote village where the church and the mosque stand side by side, WHERE DO WE GO NOW? follows the antics of the town’s women to keep their blowhard men from starting religious war. Women heartsick over sons, husbands and fathers lost to previous flare-ups unite to distract their men with clever ruses, from faking a miracle to hiring a troupe of Ukrainian dancers.

Shirin Neshat's Women Without Men is an adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur's magic realist novel of the same name. Shirin Neshat is an Iranian artist who's first feature length film Women Without Men was nominated for Golden Lion Award. Women Without Men chronicles the intertwining lives of four Iranian women during the summer of the 1953 coup d tat. The 1953 Iranian Islamic revolution a cataclysmic moment in history when an American led, British backed mission led to the over throw of Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstalled the Shah to power.Over the course of several days four disparate women in the middle east from the Iranian culture are brought together against the backdrop of political and social chaos. As the political turmoil swells in the streets of Tehran, each woman seeks to be liberated from her predicament. It is only a matter of time before the world outside the walls of unrest seep into the lives of these four women as their country's history takes a tragic turn.