Leila
From the Middle East & North Africa
•
2h 5m
Directed by Dariush Mehrjui • Drama • With Leila Hatami, Ali Mosaffa • 1999 • 125 minutes
Reza and Leila, an attractive and affluent young couple deeply in love and recently married, discover that Leila is unable to conceive. Invoking tradition, Reza's mother convinces her daughter-in-law that Reza must, out of necessity, take a second wife to produce an heir. The heartbreak that follows is "in a word, devastating" (The New York Times).
Called "the most interesting and accomplished filmmaker the United States has never heard of" by Godfrey Cheshire in The New York Press, Mehrjui has become more familiar to audiences with the critical and box office success of Leila which topped the critics' lists for best films of 1999.
Up Next in From the Middle East & North Africa
-
Rojek
Directed by Zaynê Akyol • Documentary • 2023 • 127 minutes
The Islamic State group consumed the attention of the West for years. They were despised, feared, and by some, embraced. But who were they? Filmed in prisons and detention camps, this engrossing documentary turns the camera on men and wo...
-
Dachra
Directed by Abdelhamid Bouchnak • Drama • With Yassmine Dimassi, Hela Ayed, Aziz Jebali • 2018 • 114 minutes
Ever since she was discovered naked and near-dead decades ago, Mongia has been institutionalized, with a tendency to bite her nurses. Grisly, frightening, and stuffed with howling thrills...
-
Sirens
Directed by Rita Baghdadi • Documentary • With Lilas Mayassi, Shery Bechara • 2022 • 80 minutes
SIRENS intimately chronicles the lives and music of Slave to Sirens, a band made up of five young metalheads whose burgeoning fame is set against the backdrop of the Lebanese revolution. Its members w...
