After his mother dies, 17-year-old Nahuel is shipped from Buenos Aires to the south of Argentina to live with his estranged father Ernesto, whom he has not seen in over a decade, for the three months until he turns 18. Nahuel’s response to the loss of his mother is one of arrogant, sometimes violent defiance; his already troubled relationship with his father leaves them at odds. A hunting guide, Ernesto takes Nahuel out with his team, teaching him how to use a rifle and survive in the wilderness. As the young man learns to fit in with the locals, the rancour between father and son begins to fade and Nahuel comes to understand the intricacies of mature relationships and adult emotions. Sidestepping the standard tropes of back-to-roots tales, with ‘Hunting Season’, director Natalia Garagiola takes a city boy to the country, where the familiar – family and teenage excess – are made strange (Ernesto’s five rambunctious young daughters in particular are a far cry from what Nahuel is accustomed to). The mountainous expanse of wintry Patagonia proves the perfect locale for coming of age, as Nahuel is faced with death and mourning, love and sorrow, regret and hope.

A journey to the desert sees a group of photographers face challenges during their photoshoot. The desert is abandoned and full of mystery, and the team overlook several circumstances that lead to severe consequences.

How can you rebuild yourself when you lose your father and your homeland forever at the age of 8? Nadia Nadim, whose dad was killed by the Taliban in 2000, has embarked on this quest. The young Afghan woman, her four sisters and their mother fled Kabul in the wake of the violence, grounded down by a conflict that has lasted for decades. Football passion is what saved Nadia. She became a striker on the national team of her adoptive land, Denmark, then for the Paris-Saint-Germain women’s team. Having achieved football stardom, Nadia wants to return to Afghanistan to find out more about her father’s fate. But the country is torn by terrorism as the Taliban and ISIS sow chaos daily. Giving up the trip, Nadia must grieve for another loss. However, she is unsinkable and has plans for the future—graduate as a reconstructive surgeon and heal her people.

In June of 1978, Tunisia entered the international football scene as the first African team ever to win a match in a final phase of the World Cup. The team arrived home and were hailed as heroes of the ‘Epic of Argentina’, their success helping somewhat the Tunisian people to forget they had just gone through one of the worst events in their history since independence. Just a few months before, tensions between the Only Party and the main trade union had led to confrontations on the streets. More than 500 people died in a single day, January 26th, 1978. ‘Black Thursday’ remains to date the bloodiest episode in contemporary Tunisian history, more so than the 2011 revolution. In 1978, a football team saved the regime and offered a relatively happy ending to a very black year.

'Qatar Stars' is the first feature documentary focused on girls in Qatar. It follows “The Olympic Stars”, a rhythmic gymnastics team for girls aged 9-15. In this four-year coming-of-age story, we profile the school’s most promising gymnasts as they train and experience the joys and complications of girlhood in a rapidly shifting, and sometimes contradictory, contemporary Middle East. Envisioned by former Russian rhythmic gymnast Tatiana and her Bangladeshi husband Manzoor, their school is a small but growing business. The third partner is Haya, a Qatari national, higher ed administrator, and former gymnast herself. They started the school with an entrepreneurial spirit committed to girls’ empowerment, development, and opportunity. Their aspiration is to train the girls to be the first-ever official Qatari team at professional juniors level international competitions, outside the country. The "Professional Team” consists of the school’s top gymnasts: girls from Qatar, Lebanon, Egypt, UK, and Ukraine. Each displays talent, drive and ambition. Yet each is also a budding adolescent with insecurities, a need for friendship, social media obsessions, and the occasional meltdown. In other words, a typical pre-teen. This intimate, longitudinal story is told through the girls, their families, and the Olympic Stars school—bringing many nationalities together through sport.

Young Ziad is the star of the Jalazon Refugee Camp basketball team in Palestine. When his best friend is shot dead by Israeli forces, Ziad and his teammates attempt to assassinate an Israeli settler. Ziad is captured and imprisoned, then released 15 years later. ‘Screwdriver’ is a haunting psychological thriller that follows a hallucinating Ziad as he struggles to adjust to his chaotic new world. Ziad’s mental disorder halts his advances with two love interests – Salma, a young woman from the camp, and Mina, a Palestinian-American filmmaker. Ziad becomes suicidal when soldiers imprison a young basketball player; in the dead of night he hitches a ride that will return him to a more familiar life.

Meet Marah, Mona, Betty, Noor and Maysoon – the first all-woman rally-racing team in the Middle East. Passionate, dedicated and tough as nails, these five women are taking the auto-racing world of Palestine by storm, one screeching doughnut at a time. Given the state of affairs in Palestine, it might come as a surprise that the nation has an organised racing culture in the first place. In fact, the Palestine Racing Federation owns no land and operates its events in empty lots, while drivers practise their techniques anywhere they can find enough space. Supported by their families, their friends and the racing community at large, the team members face down criticism, disappointment, arbitrary rulings and the ever-present restrictions brought about by the Israeli military occupation. Director Amber Fares gains intimate access to the daily lives of her subjects, leaving no doubt that they were born to drive, but also finding the quieter moments that show us where their inner strength springs from. Fuelled by gasoline, girl power, the desire for freedom and a kickin’ soundtrack, ‘Speed Sisters’ paints a high-octane portrait of a group of charismatic and resilient women who are living their lives on their own terms – and finding the glory they richly deserve.

Through the past seven years the civil war in Syria has spread death, horror and has cost a frightful amount of human lives. The constant bombardments and the use of conventional and chemical weapons have made it life-threatening for people to move around in the streets. Dr. Amani and her team are therefore forced to go underground, where they have built a hospital as a last life-giving bastion in the middle of the horrors caused by the war. While large parts of the population flee out of Al Ghouta, a group of brave women choose to stay in the country and set aside their own safety for the sake of their patients. They are confronted with death on a daily basis when the mutilated children and civilians are brought down into the cave for treatment. Through Amani and her female colleagues, we witness their battle to break with the Syrian view on women, their right to take responsibility and to maintain their dreams and hopes for their country and for women.

When filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige inadvertently discovered that their native Lebanon launched the first rocket in the Middle East in the 60s, and that the nation was immensely proud of its involvement in the international race to conquer the last frontier, they were surprised and intrigued. Why had such a significant episode in Lebanon’s history been altogether erased from the collective memory? Interviewing scientists, professors and army authorities involved in the development of the rocket project, the directors uncover a dream of future glory that was halted and silenced by international pressure following the Arab-Israeli military conflict of 1967. In bringing this exciting chapter of Lebanese history to light, Hadjithomas and Joreige’s film reflects the reawakening of the hopes and dreams of the peoples of the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Encourage the patients from a mental hospital to form relationships with each other, get married and live as a family. That is the bold new idea of the head of Ehsan House in Southern Tehran. For the past 20 years, its 480 patients have lived in separate male and female units with no hope of ever leaving or of having meaningful intimate relationships. But in 2017, the head of the centre secured the necessary funding to build a new unit of marital facilities. Despite strong opposition to his project, he was convinced the patients would benefit from being in a couple. As a selection committee begins evaluating patients, intriguing questions begin to arise, and hidden affections come to the surface. Finally, the team selects two patients to form the first couple of the experiment. Are these two patients capable of having a relationship that leads to marriage? What do their families think? And what about the patients who were not selected but still crave human relationships? A compelling and compassionate look at the often-invisible hierarchies and unspoken laws of a self-contained community, where love is often forced to find a way around the rules.

‘Zizou’ is a coming-of-age film about a 13-year-old overweight boy desperately trying to join and play in the neighbourhood football team. He spends most of his time on the sidelines as a substitute alongside his overweight friend, Magdy. Driven by an overwhelming need to fit in, Zizou continuously attempts to communicate with the team captain, Zaki, who becomes increasingly irritated by Zizou’s persistence and constantly belittles him. The situation escalates when Zaki starts picking Magdy to play instead of Zizou, igniting jealousy between the two friends. The tension culminates in Zizou hitting the team captain in a fit of anger. In retaliation, Zaki seeks revenge by filming Zizou shirtless and posting the video on TikTok, leading to further embarrassment and bullying for Zizou. Embarrassed and bullied, Zizou struggles to accept who he is on and off the field.