Bursting with mordant wit and alive with urgent real-life dramatic energy, Rashid Masharawi's Laila's birthday is a "fleet, dark urban comedy," (New York Times) that "moves at a brisk clip, ticking incidents like a meter on overtime" (Time Out New York).

Summer in Tangiers. A family comes together for three days following the death of their father to share memories and grieve his loss, as Muslim tradition dictates. They have left the beach behind and swapped swimsuits for djellabas as everyone gathers in a show of mourning. Sparks start to fly when Sofia jets in from New York after several years away. The youngest daughter, she made a new life for herself as an actress in America. Her return provides the opportunity to settle some scores with her sisters, as the order once maintained by the patriarch breaks down. Between laughter and tears, a collective hysteria leads each of the women to face painful truths.

17-year-old Naama spends most of her free time drinking and partying in the hopes of escaping from her parents' constant bickering, worsened by the recent disappearance of her AWOL soldier sister. When a free-spirited new girl shows up at school, Naama falls deeply in love for the first time and the intensity of the experience at once confuses her and gives her life new meaning.

Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner, The Square) plays the protagonist of Tamer El Said's ambitious feature debut, a filmmaker in Cairo attempting to capture the zeitgeist of his city as the world changes around him-from personal love and loss to the fall of the Mubarak regime. Throughout, friends send footage and stories from Berlin, Baghdad, and Beirut, creating a powerful, multilayered meditation on togetherness, the tangible hold of cities, and the meaning of homeland.

AMIRA, a 17 year old Palestinian, was conceived with the smuggled sperm of her imprisoned father, Nawar. Although their relationship since birth has been restricted to prison visits, he remains her hero. His absence in her life is overcompensated with love and affection from those surrounding her. But when a failed attempt to conceive another child reveals Nawar's infertility, Amira's world turns upside down.

In the midst of a terrorist strike, 9 Muslim women at a crossroads gather for an unforgettable night. In a country fraught with danger and strife, the women reveal their heartbreaks, their tragedies, and their hopes for the future.

The Official Oscar entry for Morocco, Abla runs a modest local bakery from her home in Casablanca where she lives alone with her 8-year-old daughter Warda. Their routine of housework and homework is interrupted one day by a knock on the door. It is Samia, a young woman looking for a job and a roof over her head. The little girl is immediately taken with the newcomer, but her mother initially refuses to allow a pregnant stranger into their home. Gradually, however, Abla's resolve softens and Samia's arrival begins to offer all of them the prospect of a new life.

Gaza, today. Sixty-year-old fisherman Issa is secretly in love with Siham, a woman who works at the market with her daughter Leila. When he discovers an ancient phallic statue of Apollo in his fishing nets, Issa hides it, not knowing what to do with this mysterious and potent treasure. Yet deep inside, he feels that this discovery will change his life forever.

A moving meditation on what it means to live in the present, YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY is an auspicious debut and Sudan's first Oscar submission, Shortly after his birth, the holy man of the village predicts that Muzamil will die at age 20. His father, unable to stand the curse, leaves home forcing Sakina to raise her son as an overly protective single mother. One day, Muzamil turns 19....

In the not-so-distant future, the free-spirited Badri family have escaped the toxic pollution and social unrest of Beirut by seeking refuge in an idyllic mountain home. Without warning, the government starts to build a garbage landfill right outside their fence, intruding on their domestic utopia and bringing the trash and corruption of a whole country to their doorstep. As the landfill rises, so does tension in the household, revealing a long-simmering division between those family members who wish to defend or abandon the mountain oasis they have built.