In 'Heiran' first time feature film director, Shalizeh Arefpour, tells the story of an Iranian girl who falls in love with an Afghanistan boy. What begins as a simple love story develops into the social and political issues of the region - Afghanis are second class citizens in Iran, without legal recourse.

Shalizeh, one of the few women film directors working in Iran, tells us about the problems of dealing with government censorship, and bringing socially controversial subjects to the surface. 'The story came to me when I was in Teheran seeing how badly the illegal Afghani workers were treated,' says Shalizeh.

Censorship rules in Iran led to the imprisonment of woman director Tahmineh Milani in 2001, and it was the intervention of Hollywood directors Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola that led to her release. 'Iran's most pressing problem is an identity crisis,' she said in a recent interview. 'Both men and women are forced to lead double lives - one lifestyle for the home and another for the public eye.'

Young Iranian director Babak Jalali, now living in London, returns to the region of his childhood, the barren steppes of the frontier lands where Iran borders on the Caspian Sea. 'Frontier Blues' follows the fate of four itinerant men in a region populated by Kazakhs, Persians, Turkmen and Russians. In the words of one of the characters it is 'a land of heartbreaks and tractors.'

At the film screening Babak tells us that his greatest influences are neither from Iran nor Britain, but the films of Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson and Aki Kaurismäki from Finland. It is a film that combines melancholy with humour, and a sense of isolation that is both regional and universal.

Between film screenings I find myself immersed in the latest novel of Chinese writer Qiu Xiaolong author of the Inspector Chen series - also rumoured to being prepared for film adaptation. The novels are set in Shanghai and provide some fascinating insights into the new China and the ongoing conflicts of an emerging consumerist society and the traditions and political echoes of the past.

In the latest of the series, 'The Mao Case', Inspector Chen must tread carefully between two worlds. There is the new China with a generation removed from the terrible injustices of the cultural revolution and a political apparatus that - for the sake of social stability - cannot afford to disavow the Mao epoch entirely. It is a balancing act that defines the paradox of contemporary Chinese society.

Strolling around Stockholm's Södermalm one cold November afternoon (one week ago to be precise) I came across two tour groups within just a couple of hours. Tourists in November is in itself an oddity, and in Södermalm, Stockholm's Bohemian quarter, more odd still.

Södermalm is, after all, off the usual tourist beat, and what made these encounters more unusual was a French speaking guide leading one group and a Spanish speaking guide for the next. The tourists were participating in the increasingly popular 'Millennium-walk tours.' These excursions follow the literary - and now cinematic trails - of Stieg Larsson's international bestsellers which began with 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' (the Swedish title is 'Men Who Hate Women'). The third and final film of the trilogy had its cinema premiere in Stockholm in November - and Stieg Larsson (who died suddenly at the age of 50, before the novels had been published), is now one of the most widely read novelists in the world.

One is reminded once again, just how effective popular culture can be in promoting a country and its cultural background. The appeal lies surely in the exotic value of experiencing a culture far removed from one's own, and in understanding that the problems of society and human nature are the same no matter where you live.