No One Knows About Persian CatsMovies like No One Knows About Persian Cats
- Key Features:
- Iranian cinema, Underground culture, Music, Social commentary, Concert, Fight for freedom, Independent film, Musical performance
- Tone:
- serious, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Film festival enthusiasts, World cinema fans, Culturally curious, Music aficionados
- Emotional Arc:
- Hope → Disillusionment
No One Knows About Persian Cats

Iranian musicians Negar and Ashkan look for band members to play at a London concert ... and the visa that allows them to leave Tehran to do so.
No One Knows About Persian Cats
The lives of three strong-willed women and a young musician cross paths in Tehran’s schizophrenic society where sex, adultery, corruption, prostitution and drugs coexist with strict religious law. In this bustling modern metropolis, avoiding prohibition has become an everyday sport and breaking taboos can be a means of personal emancipation.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been barred from leaving the country, arrives at a village on the Iran-Turkey border to supervise a film based on a real-life couple seeking passports to Europe being shot in Turkey, but both his stay and the production run into trouble.

Samad is nobody’s fool. The narcotics officer has seen his share of a drug dealer’s lies and games, and his patience has come to run thin. While searching for the infamous drug baron Nasser Khakzad, he and his colleague Hamid scour the streets of Tehran, turning an overcrowded prison on its head. With his rough and dubious approach, Samad finally manages to find the criminal’s whereabouts – but things do not quite go according to plan...

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.

Hayri and Orhan are two music producers head over heels in debt. In an attempt to find the next big thing to turn the business around, they contact Ferhat, a gastarbeiter in Germany, and desperately bring him to Istanbul to sign him. As they are struggling to find the necessary funds to promote Ferhat's debut album, a mysterious rich woman named Firuze shows up and starts supporting them. The future now seems bright, but things are not always what they seem...

Rouhi, a young bride-to-be, is hired as a maid for an affluent family in Tehran. Upon arriving, she is suddenly thrust into an explosive domestic conflict. The wife is convinced her husband is having an affair and enlists Rouhi as a spy, to follow her husband, and confirm her suspicions. What Rouhi discovers, however, threatens not only their marriage but her own future.

It is 80's Turkey, local musicians of Adiyaman are hired by the military and trained to welcome one of the forceful generals of coup regime.

Inspirational true story of Iranian dancer Afshin Ghaffarian, who risked his life for his dream to become a dancer despite a nationwide dancing ban.

A small Egyptian police band travels to Israel to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts center, only to find themselves stuck in the wrong town.

On a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.

Ethereal post-rock pioneers Sigur Rós play a string of impromptu gigs in their native Iceland after finishing a world tour in 2006. As they travel through the country, the band visits a wide variety of venues, from a large outdoor festival to a coffee shop.

Occupied France, 1942. Gilles is arrested by SS soldiers alongside other Jews and sent to a camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids sudden execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but Gilles gets assigned a life-or-death mission: to teach Farsi to Head of Camp Koch, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Through an ingenious trick, Gilles manages to survive by inventing words of "Farsi" every day and teaching them to Koch.

The story of 12-year-old Ali and his three friends. Together they work hard to survive and support their families, doing small jobs in a garage and committing petty crimes to make fast money. In a turn of events that seems miraculous, Ali is entrusted to find hidden treasure underground. He recruits his gang, but first, to gain access to the tunnel, the children must enroll at the Sun School, a charitable institution that tries to educate street kids and child laborers, close to where the treasure is located.

Since his beloved violin was broken, Nasser-Ali Khan, one of the most renowned musicians of his day, has lost all taste for life. Finding no instrument worthy of replacing it, he decides to confine himself to bed to await death.

When an ostrich-rancher focuses on replacing his daughter's hearing aid, which breaks right before crucial exams, everything changes for a struggling rural family in Iran. Karim motorbikes into a world alien to him - incredibly hectic Tehran, where sudden opportunities for independence, thrill and challenge him. But his honor and honesty, plus traditional authority over his inventive clan, are tested, as he stumbles among vast cultural and economic gaps between his village nestled in the desert, and a throbbing international metropolis.

In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.

New York, early 1960s. Against the backdrop of a vibrant music scene and tumultuous cultural upheaval, an enigmatic 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives in the West Village with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music.

Rahim is in prison because of a debt he was unable to repay. During a two-day leave, he tries to convince his creditor to withdraw his complaint against the payment of part of the sum. But things don't go as planned. Is he truly a hero?

A yellow cab is driving through the vibrant and colourful streets of Tehran. Very diverse passengers enter the taxi, each candidly expressing their views while being interviewed by the driver who is no one else but the director Jafar Panahi himself. His camera placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio captures the spirit of Iranian society through this comedic and dramatic drive…

Filmmaker Jafar Panahi and actor Behnaz Jafari travel to a tiny village after receiving a plea for help from a girl whose family has forbidden her from studying acting. Amusing encounters abound, but they soon discover that the local hospitality is rivaled by the desire to protect old traditions.

Set against the backdrop of Iran's strict and oppressive legal system, this anthology film tells the stories of four men who each face a moral crisis when having to deal with death penalties.

This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.

This film follows the making of Nekfeu's 3rd album, between Paris, Japan, Greece and the United States.

During the 2006 World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain, numerous young women are caught and rounded up for dressing as men so they could gain access to the game. Guarded by several soldiers in a holding pen, the women attempt to keep updated on the score.

In the south of Tunisia, two football fan brothers bump into a donkey lost in the middle of the desert on the border of Algeria. Strangely, the animal wears headphones over its ears.

Leningrad, one summer in the early eighties. Smuggling LPs by Lou Reed and David Bowie, the underground rock scene is boiling ahead of the Perestroika. Mike and his beautiful wife Natasha meet with young Viktor Tsoï. Together with friends, they will change the destiny of rock’n’roll in the Soviet Union.

Salih and Gürkan, two cousins from Ankara, are struggling musicians that are trying to make a living by performing at private events such as bachelorette parties. Nihat, a low profile event manager, finds a gig for the duo which leads them to encounter with unexpected guests in their "dressing room".

At the age of 40, Leila has spent her entire life caring for her parents and four brothers. A family that is constantly arguing and under pressure from various debts in the face of sanctions against Iran. While her brothers are struggling to make ends meet, Leila makes a plan.

Various women struggle to function in the oppressively sexist society of contemporary Iran.

A vacuum repairman moonlights as a street musician and hopes for his big break. One day a Czech immigrant, who earns a living selling flowers, approaches him with the news that she is also an aspiring singer-songwriter. The pair decide to collaborate, and the songs that they compose reflect the story of their blossoming love.

Under the pressure of his boss, a music producer decides to set up a group consisting of a rabbi, a priest and an imam to make them sing the living together. But the religious he recruits are far from being saints ...

In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.

A journalist descends into the dark underbelly of the Iranian holy city of Mashhad as she investigates the serial killings of sex workers by the so called "Spider Killer", who believes he is cleansing the streets of sinners.

A satirical take on the mundane absurdities of life in modern-day Iran, these nine vignettes illuminate the lighter side of enduring under authoritarian rule. Whether choosing a name for a newborn, graduating from grade school, getting a driver’s license, applying for a job, or seeking approval for a film script, if you live in Iran, you best come fluent in Orwellian discourse.

After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.

A schizophrenic rock musician, is convinced that his parents were murdered by three men. Taking the support of a journalist, he sets out to find the culprits. Will he succeed in his mission, and in the process, what will he learn about his own roots?

A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.

An old villager deeply in love with his cow goes to the capital for a while. While he's there, the cow dies and now the villagers are afraid of his possible reaction to it when he returns.

In 1986 Iran, Sahebjam, whose car breaks down in a remote village, enters into a conversation with Zahra, who relays to him the story about her niece, Soraya, whose arranged marriage to an abusive tyrant ended in tragedy.

Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.

Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.

Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.

An Iranian couple living in the US become trapped inside a hotel when insidious events force them to face the secrets that have come between them, in a night that never ends.

Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former Pakistani rock star turned immigrant, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, however, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken by a glimmer of hope for a better life.

The mysterious disappearance of a kindergarten teacher during a picnic in the north of Iran is followed by a series of misadventures for her fellow travelers.

Mohammed Assaf, an aspiring musician living in Gaza, sets a seemingly impossible goal: to compete on the program "Arab Idol."

Benjamin, a rising star filmmaker, is on the brink of premiering his difficult second film No Self at the London Film Festival when Billie, his hard drinking publicist, introduces him to a mesmeric French musician called Noah.

Teenage musicians travel to England's Spike Island in the hope of attending an outdoor performance by their favorite band, the Stone Roses.

Iranian female judokas Leila and her coach Maryam, travel to the Judo World Championship, intent on bringing home Iran’s first gold medal. Midway through the Judo World Championships, they receive an ultimatum from the Islamic Republic ordering Leila to fake an injury and lose, or she will be branded a traitor of the state. With her own and her family’s freedom at stake, Leila is faced with an impossible choice: comply with the Iranian regime as her coach Maryam implores her to do, or fight on, for the gold.

In a pseudo-futuristic 1994, a square couple enter the corrupt world of the music industry, and subsequently a maze of drugs, sex, and temptation.

Frustrated with their lack of upward mobility, some young Italians move to Cuba to start a wi-fi café and attempt to build a new life.

Kaveh Nariman is a Doctor in the medical examiner's office. One day at his work he meets a corpse which is very familiar to him.

When aspiring musician and student Deniz falls for a rough-hewn motorbike racer, tragedy and family opposition obstruct their path to love.

A group of drug-influenced lumpen teenagers from the suburbs of the city descends into the center where they do not belong, where they are excluded. They adopted a brutal method to seize rights that were not granted to them. Unaware of what will happen to them, cheerful and well-to-do university students are helpless in the face of this gun-wielding mob that suddenly raids the bar where they are having fun.

Approaching age 50, singer/songwriter Nico leads a solitary existence, far from her days as a Warhol superstar and celebrated vocalist for the Velvet Underground in the 1960s. Her life and career on the fringes, Nico's new manager convinces her to hit the road again and tour in Europe to promote her latest album. She longs to rebuild a relationship with her son, whose custody she lost long ago.

A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday... Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.

Haruki secretly had feelings for Akihiko for years, but Akihiko was still in a relationship with his roommate, the violinist Ugetsu Murata. Haruki, Akihiko, and Ugetsu's love clashes and starts to move forward.

Caught between the mob and border patrol, washed-up musician Yiannis must put his plans to leave Cyprus on hold when his beloved dog escapes across the wall to the island's Turkish side.

Forced out of their apartment due to dangerous works on a neighboring building, Emad and Rana move into a new flat in the center of Tehran. An incident linked to the previous tenant will dramatically change the young couple’s life.

An 8-year-old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.

Somaieh, the youngest daughter of an indigent family, is getting married and fear is overwhelming each and every member of the family regarding how to overcome their difficulties after she's gone.

An Iranian family survives the shah and the ayatollah and moves to France. This story follows the family through it all. Despite the politics, revolution, prison, beatings, assassinations and suicides this is a comedy.

A professional cellist has an encounter with a stranger on the subway which has unexpected and far-reaching ramifications on his life.

An ingenuous countryman Ali Nazik migrates to Istanbul and meets producer Mr. Muhsin to have his first album.

Memo lives on a remote Chilean sheep farm, hiding a beautiful singing voice from the outside world. A recluse with a glittery flair, he can't stop dwelling on the past, but what will happen once someone finally listens?

An effervescent musical about one of the most unlikely couples seen on screen: two Otaku intent on hiding their nerdiness from their colleagues!

So-yeon suffers from claustrophobia and inherits a Persian cat when its owner dies. She begins having nightmares and people around her begin dying as she searches for the truth.

Hüseyin is a young man who lives with his grandfather and grandmother in a village in Thracian Turkey. The two great loves of his life are his clarinet and Müjgan, a nurse. Although Hüseyin is content with his life, with his music and dreams of Mügan, due to an unexpected development he leaves his village. He ends up in Istanbul where he finds support first in his clarinet and then in the friendship of the singer Firuzan. Firuzan is a popular nightclub performer who is eagerly working on an album as she leads a colorful but complicated life. When Firuzan meets Huseyin, the course of events gives away to a hilarious adventure.

An ambitious singing and dancing cat in 1939 Hollywood overcomes several obstacles to fulfill his dream of becoming a movie star.

Ariana Grande takes the stage in London for her Sweetener World Tour and shares a behind-the-scenes look at her life in rehearsal and on the road.

An American woman, trapped in Islamic Iran by her brutish husband, must find a way to escape with her daughter as well.

Marcia, a classy young Parisian singer, is recording an album with her idol Daredjane, a '70s rock icon. When Daredjane dies accidentally, Marcia needs to get approval from Daredjane's rights-holder, Anthony, a suburban market vendor in his thirties, to release their album. But Anthony never liked his distant relative, let alone her music. Their two worlds clash between good and bad taste, sophistication and rudeness, sincerity and lies. Unless love gets in the way...

Benjamin, a young German computer whiz, is invited to join a subversive hacker group that wants to be noticed on the world's stage.

Aga, a band singer, returns to Hengchun with frustration. Tomoko is a Japanese model assigned to organize a local warm-up band for the Japanese super star beach concert. Together with other five ordinary Hengchun residents who were not expected to be great or anything, they formed an impossible band.

After Shideh's building is hit by a missile during the Iran-Iraq War, a superstitious neighbor suggests that the missile was cursed and might be carrying malevolent Middle-Eastern spirits. She becomes convinced a supernatural force within the building is attempting to possess her daughter Dorsa, and she has no choice but to confront these forces if she is to save her daughter and herself.

Investigating judge Iman grapples with paranoia amid political unrest in Tehran. When his gun vanishes, he suspects his wife and daughters, imposing draconian measures that strain family ties as societal rules crumble.

An Egyptian-American returns to his homeland after twenty years abroad, filled with nostalgia and high hopes. But as he reconnects with his roots, he finds himself caught between two worlds—and begins to experience the reality of a country he thought he knew.

Recounted mostly through animation to protect his identity, Amin looks back over his past as a child refugee from Afghanistan as he grapples with a secret he’s kept hidden for 20 years.

Shirin is struggling to become an ideal Persian daughter, politically correct bisexual and hip young Brooklynite but fails miserably in her attempt at all identities.

She and Her Cat details the life of a cat, entirely from the cat's perspective, as it passes time with its owner, a young woman.

From his poor childhood to his rise to fame, from his triumphs to his failures, from Paris to New York, discover the exceptional journey of an artist. Intimate, intense, fragile and indestructible, devoted to his art until the very end, here is one of the most immortal singers of all time: MONSIEUR AZNAVOUR.

Four female cons who have formed a band in prison get a chance to play at a police ball outside the walls. They take the chance to escape. Being on the run from the law they even make it to sell their music and become famous outlaws.

Mattia is about to move to Madrid by his boyfriend Eduard. When the day before leaving for Spain, Eduard announces his arrival in Rome to know the "laws", Mattia must choose whether to finally come clean with his companion, or confess to being a formidable liar.

An offbeat observation of refugees waiting to be granted asylum on a fictional remote Scottish island. It focuses on Omar, a young Syrian musician who is burdened by the weight of his grandfather’s oud, which he has carried all the way from his homeland.

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

Making music means everything for the shy Zoë. But since her father left, she never played guitar again. When she is hit by the bus from Mik, superstar Bieber size, sparks fly allthough she is not a fan at first. Off course, people around the two love birds dont exactly cooperate to make things work...

Running away from some evil arabs, a woman hides in a counterbass case, causing problems to his owner, a musician with a jelous wife who is trying to win her back.

When fate brings Belfast teacher JJ into the orbit of self-confessed "low life scum" Naoise and Liam Óg, the needle drops on a hip-hop act like no other. Rapping in their native Irish, they lead a movement to save their mother tongue.

Talent and passion for music can take one to the very top. On the way, however, there are going to be showbiz traps.

Focused on the life of the band and their collaborators over the 3 vital years in which they developed critically acclaimed albums, 'Humanz' and 'The Now Now', and undertook their most ambitious world tour to date.

Gauche is a diligent but mediocre cellist who plays for a small town orchestra and the local cinema in the early 20th century. He struggles during rehearsals and is often berated by his conductor during preparations for an upcoming performance of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. Over the course of four nights, Gauche is visited at his mill house home by talking animals as he is practicing.

A former world-famous conductor of the Bolshoï orchestra, known as "The Maëstro", Andreï Filipov had seen his career publicly broken by Leonid Brezhnev for hiring Jewish musicians and now works cleaning the concert hall where he once directed. One day, he intercepts an official invitation from the prestigious Théâtre du Châtelet. Through a series of mad antics, he reunites his old orchestra, now composed of old alcoholic musicians, and flies to perform in Paris and complete the Tchaikovsky concerto interrupted 30 years earlier. For the concerto, he engages a young violin soloist with whom he has an unexpected connection.

"Jellicle" cats join for a Jellicle ball where they rejoice with their leader, Old Deuteronomy. One cat will be chosen to go to the "Heavyside Layer" and be reborn.

The story of an encounter between a bourgeois man and a poor woman, because their teenage children fall in love.

Working in the shadows of music stars, a gifted guitarist returns to his hometown and decides to stage a disappearing act in order to propel him to fame.

When the actor in a scene for his film Life And Nothing More… has to quit, a film director casts another man for the part. However, complications arise since the man and the woman who was cast for the scene know each other.

The story of Shaista, a young man who—newly married to Benazir and living in a camp for displaced persons in Kabul—struggles to balance his dreams of being the first from his tribe to join the Afghan National Army with the responsibilities of starting a family. Even as Shaista’s love for Benazir is palpable, the choices he must make to build a life with her have profound consequences.

In this hit Russian musical, a group of friends flaunts Soviet authority in 1950s Moscow by embracing jazz. When Communist Mels falls for Polly, a free-spirited jazz fan, he risks losing his party membership by associating with her rebellious crew.

From a repressive childhood to artistic revolution, Ney Matogrosso transforms Brazil's stages — and himself — through music, creativity and inner fire.
