Taxi Teherán

Going into a screening of this film, there are a couple of things an audience should know. In 2010 Jafar Panahi, was arrested for making a film against the Iranian regime. Since then he has not been allowed to make films, leave the country or participate in interviews. Taxi, however, is his third film since the ban, and even though it's filmed entirely within the confined space of a taxi, it shows us the streets of Tehran. We're out in the open, right under the nose of the Iranian government.

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Panahi was banned from making films for 20 years by the Iranian Government in 2010 but who then responded by making idiosyncratic 'films' with no actors and no end credits and then smuggling them out of the country.

In Tehran Taxi, Panahi masquerades as a taxi driver and picks up a range of curious passengers throughout Tehran; from a couple of old ladies nursing a goldfish in a bowl, a mugger, a flower seller and a traffic accident victim.

It's an unusual style, but one made familiar by dash-cams across the world and both the subject matter and style of interlocking stories reminded me of Jim Jarmush's 1991 film 'Night on Earth'.

Panahi isn't a comedian, but his style is lighthearted. The fact he is a film maker rather than a real taxi driver also means that he doesn't know many directions around the city and he further bemuses passengers when he refuses to take payment at the end of the ride. Equally though film paints an interesting picture of the everyday lives of the passengers and the buzz of the city going on on the streets of Tehran outside of the taxi's window.

Tehran Taxi is an excellent film. Sit back and enjoy the ride!

Acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi drives a cab through the streets of Teheran. The changing passengers speak out openly what is on their mind. A female teacher and a young man discuss death penalty, a bootlegger offers the new season of "The Walking Dead" and some Woody Allen movies, two old women want to transport their goldfish in a glass bowl to a holy place, a young woman wants to transport her much older husband who has been injured in an accident, and a cheeky little girl explains the rules of Iranian filmmaking and her entitlement to a frappuccino.

A highly emotionally satisfying miniature. On the surface it feels small and funny, but underneath it is seething in anger and defiance at the Iranian government. One of the stuff that makes the movie so unusual is that it is so difficult to pinpoint whether everything is planned or caught in the spur of the moment. Especially the final scene which kept my mind wondering. I really like this a lot. More so when I found out about the sad state of affairs for Jafar Panahi. He is actually banned from making movies for 20 years because he was deemed to have crossed the "sordid realism" line drawn by the Iranian government. How he subtly pokes fun at the authorities is hilarious and yet warm. The whole 80+ min film feels like a window into another world, a world not unlike ours, especially when Eric Khoo's most recent film is deemed "unscreenable". One of the most important films I have seen this year. Now I feel like hunting down The White Balloon, Closed Curtains and This Is Not a Film.

Some films can't be fully appreciated without knowledge of the way they have been conceived. This is clearly the case for 'Taxi Teheran'. The story behind it: Iranian film maker Jafar Panahi has been convicted by the regime for making 'subversive' films, and is no longer allowed to film in Iran. Consequently, Panahi has switched to making 'stealth' films: his film making is no longer visible. These films are smuggled out of the country and showed in art-house cinemas around the world.

'Taxi Teheran' is filmed with a dash cam. It shows Panahi as a taxi driver in Teheran, talking with his passengers, and discussing the hot political topics in Iran he is not allowed to touch upon. His passengers talk about the death penalty, about political prisoners, about the male-centred inheritance laws, or about Ghoncheh Ghavami, the woman who got a prison sentence for attending a volleyball game.

Panahi cleverly links the political issues to real-life situations, such as the wish of a of a motorcycle accident victim, to have his last will and testament filmed with a smart-phone, before he passes away. The film is far from boring and has some funny moments. It's all done in a documentary style, without any artificial cinematographic additions. Still, everything is staged, and some camera movements and cuts make clear that Panahi is a professional director.

Unfortunately, just its being made in a stealth mode doesn't mean 'Taxi Teheran' is a terrific film. It largely depends on the dash cam-gimmick, which wears off after a half hour or so. The story itself is too meager to carry the whole film, and some of the taxi passengers are just not interesting enough to grab the viewer's attention.

Imagine, if you will, a world in which you may walk freely on the streets, but are hardly free at all. That's the world in which Iranian director Jafar Panahi lives, breathes and tries to work - one we're introduced to in gentle, tartly comic fashion in his latest film. Taxi, which won the Golden Bear at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival, gives viewers a seductive, sobering glimpse into modern- day Iran, a country where criminals are executed for petty theft and women jailed for trying to attend a men's volleyball match.

The premise of Taxi is simple - Panahi himself, with cameras cleverly affixed throughout his vehicle, drives a taxi through the teeming streets of Iran. Throughout the day, Panahi the cabbie picks up strangers, friends and relatives, played by themselves or non- professional actors. Along the way, he makes idle conversation with them, or they chat amongst themselves - ordinary chatter that carries quite extraordinary import.

It's fascinating, thought-provoking stuff, delving deeply into ideas and questions about Iran and its politics while firmly couched in the language of the everyday. Two passengers launch into an impassioned discussion on the merits (or lack thereof) of capital punishment and syariah law. The broken body of a man is bundled into the backseat and, with what he thinks is his dying breath, he tries to circumvent laws that will prevent his sobbing wife from inheriting their home. Art and ideas are sold on the streets, the stuff of covert piracy, as the precocious Hana Saeidi, Panahi's young niece, relates to him the lessons she has learnt on how exactly to make films that will be 'screenable' in Iran.

To be honest, the final film is an amiable if somewhat rickety affair. Parts of it work better as metaphors, faltering somewhat in the execution. For instance, Hana is, literally and metaphorically, the future - both of Iran and, with her own little hand-held camera, filmmaking. But the moment when she tries to exert control over a scene she's shooting from the window of the taxi, haranguing a little boy to behave differently so that her footage will pass muster in school, feels a little too on-the-nose. In a couple of instances, it's easy to identify the issues Panahi wants to raise: in a bowl of fish or an iPad video, he finds insights about the power of superstition and the tragedy of poverty. But the scenes themselves don't always work as well, ambling when they should sprint.

Nevertheless, it's impossible to remain unmoved by the quiet power and heartbreaking passion of Taxi. This is a gem of a film: subtle, leisurely and surprisingly funny; thoughtful and deep but rarely overbearingly so. It's all the more impressive, of course, as a testament to Panahi's ongoing refusal to bend and break beneath the 20-year filmmaking ban that was slapped on him in December 2010. Since then, he's smuggled a film out of Iran on a flash drive baked into a cake, and assembled Taxi out of cam footage shot in broad daylight in Tehran. That's why, in ways both big and small, Taxi serves as a bold reminder of the bravery and strength of the human spirit.