It consistently amazes me that, despite all the stuff we complain about living here in the United States, that we still have it so much better than most of the other countries on the planet. We're so used to our freedoms that any perceived infringement on them seems like an affront. But imagine if you lived in Iran, where all you're craving is more information than the government-run TV stations are giving you. Satellite dishes, though, are illegal, mainly because of programming that the government thinks is immoral. Many internet sites, especially those that are in opposition to the fundamentalist Muslim government, are blocked. Western music and movies are banned. How would you deal with all the restrictions?

That topic is examined in Head Wind, a fascinating documentary from Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. In the film, he shows that Iranians are starving for information and entertainment, and in this digital age, the government, as hard as they try to, is having a hard time stopping the tide.

For Americans to better understand our present conflict with Iran, we need to look at the history of our involvement and interests there. And for that, we need a movie. That is how the award-winning photographer Shirin Neshat sees it anyway. She is planning her feature film debut to be set in 1953, the year the CIA was involved in the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and she hopes to show how this event figures into the current relationship between the west and the middle east. It won't be the first time a film maker presents the past as a parallel or a cause for the present, but the subject matter may specifically remind people of the most controversial points of Fahrenheit 9/11, in which Michael Moore insinuates that 9/11 was somewhat America's own fault.

The film, which Neshat has yet to pin a name on (it will be based on the book Women Without Men), will not be the same kind of propaganda that Moore's doc is, and it isn't likely to be all that pro-Iran, either. Neshat, who moved to America in the mid-'70s to attend UC Berkeley and is presently living in New York, has not been to Iran in ten years because her work on gender roles in Islamic society is not very popular back home. Of course, this film could make her just as unwelcome in parts of the U.S. too.

Imagine if the music in America had been controlled by the government. Which artists would have still been able to make it? What albums would have been denied release? This is a thought-provoking hypothetical because American music has been so much about breaking barriers and defining new sounds. More than any other art, entertainment, media or industry, music illustrates the freedom we have in this country.

In Iran, they haven't been so fortunate. Since the country's revolution in 1979, pop music has been banned, female vocals have been restricted and creative innovation has been curbed. All music in Iran is regulated and censored by Ershad, the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, which has separate committees for judging an artist's musical style and lyrical content. To get approval from the government, a song has to pass each committee's standards, and that is a rarity these days. Additionally, live performances are also scrutinized, with Ershad monitoring the appearance and actions of artists on stage.

Once an employee of Iran's Ministry of the Interior, Mir Qanbar is now a 74-year-old retiree who has dedicated himself to winning an elected position in his country's government, be it the presidency or merely a seat in Parliament. Despite a profound lack of success (he has been disqualified from several presidential elections for not having enough votes, and gets infinitesimal support in parliamentary elections), Mir Qanbar and his faithful friend Seifollah campaign tirelessly, traveling from village to village, handing out flyers and talking with farmers, shepherds, and assorted passers-by.

In President Mir Qanbar, director Mohammad Shirvani documents the tail end of one of his subject's endless campaigns for Parliament. Though his film is by no means reverential, it nevertheless lends Mir Qanbar a rugged sort of dignity. He comes across not as a Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, but instead as a quiet, determined man who has given considerable thought to the policies he would introduce, and works extremely hard to reach his unattainable goal. Because of how poor and sparsely populated Mir Qanbar's district is, he and Seifollah are forced to visit many villages every day, traveling between them along deserted dirt roads by cart and bicycle. Any doubts about the seriousness of the campaign are erased as Shirvani watches the two men -- Seifollah seemingly untroubled by his considerable physical handicaps -- ford streams, wander through fields, and climb steep hills, bicycle in hand in pursuit of voters.

Mani Haghighi's latest film, Men at Work, is one of the most accessible foreign films, let alone Iranian films, I've seen in a long time. Its simple story is of four middle-aged men on their way home from a ski trip who make a pit stop alongside the mountain road and obsess about a large phallic rock jutting out from the edge of a cliff. They decide that they can not leave the site until they've succeeded in knocking the thing over, and make every attempt to push it, ram it, pull it, dig it out and leverage it. Others drive by, turn around and offer assistance or make attempts of their own. The four men just keep on trying through the night.

Although steeped in allegory, political or otherwise, the film is perfectly enjoyable, and quite hilarious, in its literal sense. Its enigmatic comedy is akin to something out of Monty Python, and its most basic elements align it with Looney Tunes, and yet despite its absurdity Men at Work feels completely real and reasonable. Shot digitally, it has the impression of a home movie, as if the camera is a fifth friend who merely observes and records the endeavor.

Mansour (Hossein Yari) is guilty of murder, awaiting the decision of whether or not he will be executed. His fate does not fall in the hands of a judge, though. It falls to the family of the man he murdered; if they ever make it down to the prison to make the call. Under Iranian law in cases of capital punishment, it is up to the victim's family to either condemn the offender to hang or save him with their forgiveness, but they are required to appear on the day of execution to officially select their verdict. Mansour has already faced the day of his sentencing a few times, and each time the judgment has been postponed due to the family's absence. And so he continues to wait for his appointment with death.

Anyone familiar with existentialist Iranian cinema can predict how Day Break ends, but it doesn't really matter if Mansour lives or dies. He is like Schrodinger's Cat, simultaneously alive and dead and neither state all at the same time. Trapped in a form of limbo, he endures the psychological struggle with having an indefinite future and a definite lack of free will. The torture of not knowing, for Mansour, becomes far worse a punishment than death.