

Unfinished Stories employs a structure familiar to Western indie cinema by following a set of seemingly random but interlocking episodes. Debut director Pourya Azarbayjani presents the tales of several women who spend much of the film alone on the streets of Tehran after dark – a particularly fraught place for unescorted women in a Muslim nation. The film's three primary stories each represents a different point in the cycles of courtship and childbirth. One young woman hopes to elope with her unseen fiance, but faces insurmountable problems when he doesn't show up. An older, married woman seeks to buy a pregnancy test, the results of which could dictate her marriage's fate. A new mother at a hospital resorts to drastic measures when a financial problem arises. (c) http://clatl.com/atlanta/iranian-film-today/Content?oid=1275194

Unfinished Stories employs a structure familiar to Western indie cinema by following a set of seemingly random but interlocking episodes. Debut director Pourya Azarbayjani presents the tales of several women who spend much of the film alone on the streets of Tehran after dark – a particularly fraught place for unescorted women in a Muslim nation. The film's three primary stories each represents a different point in the cycles of courtship and childbirth. One young woman hopes to elope with her unseen fiance, but faces insurmountable problems when he doesn't show up. An older, married woman seeks to buy a pregnancy test, the results of which could dictate her marriage's fate. A new mother at a hospital resorts to drastic measures when a financial problem arises. (c) http://clatl.com/atlanta/iranian-film-today/Content?oid=1275194
2007-01-01
5
5.9The film contains five stories set on desolate stretches of a desert highway. Two men on the run from their past, a band on its way to a gig, a man struggling to get home, a brother in search of his long-lost sister and a family on vacation are forced to confront their worst fears and darkest secrets in these interwoven tales.
6.5In the aftermath of her tumultuous relationship with a charismatic and manipulative older man, Julie begins to untangle her fraught love for him in making her graduation film, sorting fact from his elaborately constructed fiction.
5.9In a series of three vignettes, three women in turn struggle to free themselves from the men who restrict their personal freedom.
7.0Nancy Stokes, a retired schoolteacher, is pretty sure she has never had good sex. Now that her husband has died, she is determined to take a tour of sexual vistas that until now she has only imagined. She even has a plan; it involves an anonymous hotel room, and a sex worker who calls himself Leo Grande.
6.8An unexpected affair quickly escalates into a heart-stopping reality for two women whose passionate connection changes their lives forever.
6.7In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.
7.1Marnie is a beautiful but emotionally withdrawn thief, stealing from employers before disappearing under new identities. When her new boss, Mark Rutland, discovers her secret, his fascination turns to obsession, and he blackmails her into marriage, convinced he can cure her. But as he probes deeper into Marnie’s fractured mind, long-buried fears and compulsions begin to surface.
6.9A teen's life turns upside down when her boyfriend impregnates both her and a new student at school.
6.9Frances Mayes, a 35-year-old professor and writer from San Francisco, decides to take a tour of Tuscany following a difficult divorce. After impulsively buying a run-down villa in the Italian countryside, she begins to piece her life back together in unexpected ways.
6.2The incredibly spoiled and overprivileged students of Camden College are a backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate.
6.6A trailer is burning in the middle of a plain. The bodies of two adulterous lovers are found. Scenes from both families, before and after the dramatic events, suggest an unusual connection between them. But what is their secret?
6.4Not long after they cross paths at an art gallery, architect Ray Reardon and hypnotically sensual Lena are married with children. But as strange incidents occur, Ray begins to realize he may not really know the woman he married.
7.0After witnessing a mysterious woman brutally slay a homemaker, prostitute Liz Blake finds herself trapped in a dangerous situation. While the police thinks she is the murderer, the real killer is intent on silencing her only witness.
6.8In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.
7.0A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
6.3A journey into uncharted and forbidden territory through three tales tangled in space and time.
6.9Agnes feels stuck. Unlike her best friend, Lydie, who’s moved to New York and is now expecting a baby, Agnes still lives in the New England house they once shared as graduate students, now working as a professor at her alma mater. A ‘bad thing’ happened to Agnes a few years ago and, since then, despite her best efforts, life hasn’t gotten back on track.
6.1A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.
6.3Seven mini-stories of adultery: a widow misbehaves at her husband's funeral, a wife turns to streetwalking for revenge, a prudish girl surprises, a neglected wife vies for her husband's attention, a fight over a dress, a death pact, and a detective revealed as a jealous husband's spy.
6.1In East Los Angeles, an 18-year-old struggles between her ambitions of going to college and the desires of her domineering mother for her to get married, have children, and oversee the small, rundown family-owned textile factory.