Arab LGBT : Movies, documentaries and short films of interest for a Gay and Lesbian audience from Algeria Afghanistan Egypt Iran Iraq Lebanon Morocco Tunisia + Pakistan and Turkey
A Cinematographic Anthology 1973-2024
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- DirectorSalah AbouseifStarsMohamed El ArabiShams El-BarudyFayez HalawaAhmed (Muhammad Al-Araby) from Ismalia come to Cairo looking for work. Promise of richness is really far from reality of life. Ahmed falls in love with Naeema, a prostitute. And then there is Raouf Bey who is gay and fell in love with him.
- DirectorYoussef ChahineStarsNaglaa FathiAhmed ZakiFarid ShawqiYehia is a young man living in the cosmopolitan Alexandria during World War II. Inspired by American movies and Shakespeare, he aspires to be an actor, but struggles to pursue his Hollywood dream, given the constraints of his life in the middle class and the horrors of war.
- DirectorNouri BouzidStarsImed MaalalKhaled KsouriHabib BelhadiIn the ensuing days before his wedding bridegroom Hachemi faces both the anxieties of the future and the shadows of the past. His best friend, Farfat, is the topic of street graffiti and local gossip, which calls his manhood into question. This ripples out to affect Hachemi for, unbeknownst to anyone, as apprenticed youths they were molested by Ameur, the local carpenter. Farfat is banished from his father's home and the shared secret between the two friends threatens to undo more than just the wedding, but their very lives.
- DirectorNouri BouzidStarsAbdellatif KechicheGhalya LacroixJacques PenotRoufa, a young prostitute (Bezness) befriends a French photographer sent to do an expose.
- DirectorAtif YilmazStarsMeral OguzLale MansurDeniz TürkaliNewly divorced Nilgün is assigned to a small town. One day, she meets her long-lost childhood friend Havva while examining sex workers in a brothel. Two women get closer, but their relationship is tested by social and cultural conflicts.
- DirectorJamil DehlaviStarsJames WilbyMelissa LeoShabana AzmiA childless Western couple visit a fertility shrine in Karachi run by eunuchs and set off a huge culture clash.
- DirectorOrhan OguzStarsFikret KuskanMevlüt DemiryayMenderes SamancilarA dwarf and a transvestite, both are excluded from the society and doomed to exist at night. Their lives overlap in a strange encounter and this becomes the start of their friendship.
- DirectorYousry NasrallahStarsSeif AbdelrahmanAhmed KamalAbla KamelNoubi, an avowed communist from a wealthy family, sets out to find his half-brother Gamal after Gamal inherits his father's fortune. In the process, Noubi is supposed to kill his stepmother Raifa, a supposed drug dealer, before she can kill Gamal.
- DirectorAtif YilmazStarsDerya ArbasDeniz TürkaliUzay HepariSerap is a young woman who works as a prostitute in the bars of Beyoglu and one day she meets Fulya, a transgender woman, and Melek, an obsessive woman. Together all there have ups and downs in the dirty night life. Serap's life changes because she finds out that her boyfriend is cheating on her with another man.
- DirectorMehreen JabbarStarsNadia JamilKunwal MumtazSaania SaeedThe story revolves around three women and a transvestite working in a beauty salon, whose interaction with one another engenders facets of personality and suppressed desires in each one hitherto unknown to them.
- DirectorFerzan ÖzpetekStarsAlessandro GassmannFrancesca d'AlojaCarlo CecchiFrancesco inherits an old palace from a Turkish aunt and moves to Istanbul to renovate it.
- DirectorDaoud Aoulad-SyadStarsHassan EssakaliMohamed BastaouiAbdellah DidaneThe film tells the story of three people related to each other by their common itineraries: that of Rabii with his dreams; Kacem who is sick and trying to forget his dark past and Laarbi, an ex-boxer, an ex-convict and a mythomaniac who ends up in loneliness.
- DirectorMaryam ShahriarStarsAltinay Ghelich TaghaniSoghra KarimiZahra MohammadiAmangol's father cuts her hair and sends her to a village to work as a boy in a carpet weaving shop.
- DirectorNadir MoknècheStarsBiyounaCarmen MauraDjemel BarekIn Algiers in 1993, while the civil war is starting, Mrs Osmane's tenants have to endure her bad temper. Her husband left her and the fear to lose her respectability haunt her. The former member of the Resistance during the Independence War persists in controlling the slightest moves of the households rather than struggle against her own frustrations. Learning her daughter is in love, the possibility of finding herself alone will push her to the limit: The symbolical Mrs Osmane "harem" is about to collapse.
- DirectorAkram ZaatariA look at the sexuality and self image of gay men in Lebanon, a country where the penalty for homosexuality is still imprisonment.
- DirectorMitra FarahaniSonbol B. Y.StarsMorvaridTeheran, October, 2000. One year ago, Morvarid was a man. Since her operation, she lives her femininity shielded from glances, between the four walls of her apartment. For the first time, she's covered with a chador and gets ready to go out as a woman ; we are going to follow her metamorphosis. How, in a country as Iran, can one have the will to be a woman?
- DirectorAbdelkrim BahloulStarsCharles BerlingMehdi DehbiOuassini EmbarekJean Senac, a French settler in North Africa, poet and creator of radio programs, decided to stay in Algeria after the declaration of independence in 1962. Ten years later he is now under police surveillance.
- DirectorMania AkbariStarsBijan DaneshmandMania AkbariA film in several episodes with Bijan Daneshmand and Mania Akbari, exposing some of issues of men and women within confines of tradition and family life in Iran.
- DirectorÖmer Faruk SorakStarsCem YilmazÖzge ÖzberkOzan GüvenA slick young Turk kidnapped by extraterrestrials shows his great « humanitarian spirit » by outwitting the evil commander-in-chief of the planet of G.O.R.A.
- DirectorMitra FarahaniStarsCoralie RevelStéphane BenrezzakFilmmaker Mitra Farahani portrays love and sex in today's Iran. One part fiction and one part documentary, the film was shot secretly and is banned in its native country. The fictional part is based on "The story of Zohra and Manouchehr" poem of Iraj Mirza.
- DirectorNadir MoknècheStarsLubna AzabalBiyounaNadia KaciThis movie portrays three women living in today's Algeria between modern society and Islamic fundamentalism, self-determination and dependence. Goucem, a young woman who works for a photographer and mistress of a rich doctor, her mother Papicha, a former cabaret star, and her best friend Fifi, a prostitute, all live in a hotel in the city center of Algiers. Their difficult personal situation and the growing influence of Islam lead to dramatic consequences...
- DirectorNegin KianfarDaisy MohrStarsZahra MeygoliA young trans woman is followed in her transition through gender-affirming-surgery in Iran, up to and beyond her operation. We meet her boyfriend, other transgender people (among them, a transgender man), the doctors, a priest and especially her family. All of them are religious, all of them are changing lives.
- DirectorMarwan HamedStarsAdel EmamNour El-SherifYoussraMeditations on corruption, fundamentalism, prostitution, homosexuality, and drugs in central Cairo.
- DirectorParvez SharmaStarsMuhsin HendricksA.K. HoosenMazenA documentary on gay, lesbian, and transgender Muslims across the Muslim and Western worlds.