Watchmen Productions

Mahin lives alone in Tehran since her husband’s death and her daughter’s departure for Europe, until an afternoon tea with friends leads her to break her solitary routine and revitalize her love life.

Donato fails in his attempt to save a drowning man, and meets one of the man's friends. He decides to start his life over, but pieces of his past keep coming after him.

Being mother is the most natural thing in the world. Or so it seems. Yet the demands on women with children have rarely been as overloaded and contradictory as they are in today’s Western world. Promises of happiness are often followed by disadvantages, excessive demands and feelings of guilt. The mother has become an artificially glorified ideal, which nevertheless is often legitimized by the „nature of the woman“. We live in a time when three people could claim to be the same child’s mother: egg donors give their genes to beget children, surrogate mothers deliver babies which they give away immediately after birth, and men raise children by themselves – without a woman at their side. Hence the question arises: What makes a human being a real mother?

An urban legend of Athens says that in the 80s a girl was swept away by an ancient underground river that nobody has ever seen. Today a young anthropologist is researching the case, interviewing the girl’s three best friends and their former history teacher.

Accompanying activist Nardjes with his camera, Karim Aïnouz documents the youth culture, which is confidently taking to the streets for a democratic future in Algeria, whose independence their parents and grandparents have already fought.