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Illustration by Franz Lang.No official competition title unveiled in Cannes this year spoke to our troubled times with the same full-throated urgency as Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or–winning It Was Just an Accident (all titles 2025 unless otherwise noted). It was a historic award for a groundbreaking film. Panahi, who had already received the Golden Lion in Venice for The Circle (2000) and the Golden Bear in Berlin for Taxi (2015), joins Henri-Georges Clouzot, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Robert Altman as one of the four directors to have won top honors at all three festivals. And he completed the trifecta with a film that serves as an explicit, fearless response to the censorship and humiliations he has long suffered at the hands of the regime in his native Iran. In July 2022, the filmmaker was arrested by Iranian authorities for signing a petition against police violence, and subsequently spent several months in jail.

Iran has called for an official explanation from the French government over a comment made by French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot, after dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi won the Palme d’Or on Saturday (May 24) for his film It Was Just An Accident.

Barrot posted on X saying Panahi’s win was a “a gesture of resistance against the Iranian regime’s oppression”.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mohammad Tanhaei then criticised Barrot’s“insulting remarks and unfounded allegations,” according to a report in Iranian state media, PressTV.

The report also said that during a meeting with the French envoy...

Bringing a turbulent world together through cinema, the 78th Cannes Film Festival closed with its most political moment, as Iranian director Jafar Panahi accepted the Palme d’Or for “It Was Just an Accident,” a film directly inspired by his time in prison.

Filled with equal helpings of absurdist humor and ire, Panahi’s film follows five characters who think they’ve identified the prosecutor who tortured them during their own arrests — but as they were all blindfolded in jail, none can be entirely certain their captive is the same man.

Since Panahi’s first arrest and conviction for “propaganda against the regime” in 2010, the director has continued to make films, even when expressly forbidden from doing so. In 2011, he sent a flash drive to Cannes with his movie, “This Is Not a Film,” and has remained a vocal defender of other directors whose work the government seeks to suppress.

Neon has taken North American rights on revered Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi’s Cannes competition title “It Was Just an Accident,” which marks Panahi’s first film since being released from prison in Iran.

The film, starring Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, and Vahid Mobasser, was greeted with a long standing ovation and is a Cannes standout title.

“It Was Just an Accident” centers around an outpouring of strong feelings by a group of former prisoners toward a torturous guard.

“When you spend eight hours a day blindfolded, seated in front of a wall, being interrogated by someone standing behind your back every day, you can’t stop wondering what kind of conversation you can have with this man,” Panahi told Variety in one of his first interviews following his 14-year ban on making movies, speaking to the press and traveling.

The film is produced by Jafar Panahi and Philippe Martin...

Further pursuing its acquisition spree at the Cannes Film Festival, Mubi has acquired Jafar Panahi‘s “It Was Just an Accident” for multiple international territories.

The expanding indie streamer, distributor, and producer has taken the latest film by the revered Iranian auteur for Latin America, U.K., Ireland, Germany, Austria, Turkey and India.

The deal was negotiated between Mubi and MK2 Films, who are handling international sales.

The movie’s premiere in competition at Cannes marked the Iranian auteur’s big comeback to the festival after being released from prison and seven years after “Three Faces.” It was greeted with a long standing ovation.

After the roaring applause died down, Panahi made an emotional speech in which he paid homage to the filmmakers who are currently imprisoned in Iran, saying he felt some guilt upon being released from prison. “I turned around and saw a very high wall. And behind this wall,...

Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director long silenced by his government, made a triumphant return to the Cannes Film Festival this May with his thriller It Was Just An Accident, marking his first in-person appearance at the event in 22 years. Convicted in 2010 of “propaganda against the system,” Panahi endured multiple imprisonments, a hunger strike in 2022, and a 20-year ban on filmmaking and travel before his release in 2023, a period during which he covertly continued creating works like This Is Not a Film and No Bears.

His latest effort, shot clandestinely in Iran and edited in France, probes state violence through the story of a man who kidnaps a figure resembling his former torturer, blending black comedy and moral urgency in a narrative born from Panahi’s own prison encounters.

Upon the film’s world premiere on May 20, he acknowledged that “nothing in Iran is predictable” and expressed gratitude for regaining the right to travel,...

For the first time in over two decades, acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi spoke to the press at the Cannes Film Festival — not remotely from house arrest in Tehran but as a free man. At the press conference for his competition film It Was Just an Accident, Panahi reflected on his long-awaited return to the Croisette and the weight of representing those who remain silenced in Iran.

This year’s Cannes marks Panahi’s first appearance at the festival since 2003, when Crimson Gold won the Un Certain Regard prize.

Panahi has only recently been able to travel, after, in February 2023, he was released from prison, following a hunger strike. A 2010 conviction, which banned him from travel as well as from filmmaking, was overturned. Suddenly, Panahi could work and move as he wished.

“It took some time for me to get back on my feet and get back to work,” said Panahi.

Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi struck a chord with “It Was Just an Accident,” one of his most political movies, and his first film since being released from jail in Iran. The movie, which marks his comeback in competition at Cannes seven years after “Three Faces,” was greeted with a nearly eight-minute standing ovation at its premiere on Tuesday.

After the roaring applause died down, Panahi made an emotional speech in which he paid homage to the filmmakers who are currently imprisoned in Iran, saying he felt some guilt upon being released from prison. “I turned around and saw a very high wall. And behind this wall, all these other loved ones, all these people remained behind this wall,” he said. “So I wondered how I could be happy, how I could feel free, if they were still inside.”

He continued: “Today, I’m here with you, I receive this joy,...

The first time that dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was imprisoned for his supposed crimes against the regime, he spent most of his time in solitary confinement, blindfolded whenever he was taken out to be interrogated. Deprived of the use of his eyes, Panahi focused all of his attention on his ears — he would obsessively listen for auditory clues around him, and fantasize about his captor’s identity based on the sound of his voice.

When Panahi was imprisoned again 12 years later, he was placed in the general population with 300 other prisoners, most of whom had opposed the government in one way or another, but few of whom agreed on the best tactic of doing so. The filmmaker was unnerved — and compelled — by the inevitability of those disagreements becoming even sharper between these people after they were released; some traumatized former detainees would simply try to get on with their lives,...

Dissident Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi on Tuesday walked up the Montées des Marches steps of the Cannes Film Festival’s red carpet for the world premiere of his surreptitiously shot new film “It Was Just an Accident, marking a historic moment that follows a 14-year ban on making films, giving interviews and travelling abroad.

Panahi – who is known globally for prizewinning works such as “The Circle,” “Offside,” “This is Not a Film,” “Taxi,” and most recently “No Bears” – was arrested in 2023 in Tehran in the wake of the country’s conservative government crackdown and incarcerated for nearly seven months on charges of “propaganda against the system.”

His ban was lifted by Iranian authorities in April 2023. Panahi’s presence in Cannes appears to be a signal to the outside world that Iran is, at least cosmetically, changing its course amid escalating tensions following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September...

Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who is considered one of the country’s greatest living film masters, is in Cannes with his latest film “It Was Just an Accident,” marking his first project since being incarcerated for several months in 2023 for criticizing the Iranian government.

In 2010, the auteur — known globally for prizewinning works such as “The Circle,” “Offside,” “This is Not a Film,” “Taxi” and most recently “No Bears” — was banned from making movies, speaking to the press and traveling, though he surreptitiously kept making them anyway. The ban was lifted in April 2023, and now Iranian authorities have allowed him to travel to Cannes to launch “It Was Just an Accident.”

In one of his first interviews since the 14-year ban was lifted, Panahi spoke to Variety through an interpreter about “It Was Just an Accident,” revealing how the drama — which centers around an outpouring of strong feelings by a group...

Jafar Panahi was not born a dissident filmmaker. He never strived to become one. He had the mantle of dissident artist thrust upon him by the regime in Tehran.

In 2009, after Panahi attended the funeral of a student killed in the so-called Green Revolution protests, the government banned him from leaving the country. In 2010, citing his plans to shoot a film with the protests as a backdrop, the government slapped him with a 20-year ban on travel and filmmaking along with a six-year suspended prison sentence for “propaganda against the system.”

Panahi was famous in international art house circles before the ban — The White Balloon (1995) won Cannes’ Camera d’Or for best first feature, The Circle (2000) earned Venice’s Golden Lion for best film — but it was after the ban that the mainstream press took notice.

When the 2011 Berlin Film Festival staged a symbolic protest, leaving a seat empty for Panahi,...

Buyers are finally wise to the fact that Cannes is driving the Oscar race and even the specialized box office. Everyone wants to find the next “Anora,” “The Substance,” “Emilia Perez,” or “Anatomy of a Fall.” And more buyers like Mubi, Metrograph, Sideshow, and other upstarts have emerged to take on the likes of Neon and A24, who come to Cannes armed with several titles already set to debut.

Below, we’ve identified 13 movies looking for homes that could be the next awards breakout, including new films from Lynne Ramsay and Richard Linklater and the debuts of Kristen Stewart and Harris Dickinson.

All titles presented alphabetically.

“The Chronology of Water” (Un Certain Regard)

Director: Kristen Stewart

Stars: Imogen Poots, Thora Birch, Jim Belushi, Tom Sturridge

Buzz: Even if it’s in a sidebar for a first-time director, Kristen Stewart’s debut should be a hot ticket with a lot of...

MK2 Films has boarded revered Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi’s mystery movie “It Was Just An Accident” which will world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Panahi produced the film with Les Films Pelléas, the production company behind “Anatomy of a Fall.” It’s co-produced by Bidibul Productions and Pio &Co. The film did its post-production in France.

The plot is under wrap and the enigmatic logline says, “What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences.”

Panahi was last in Cannes in 2021 with his documentary “The Year Of The Everlasting Storm” which played in Special Screenings. His 2018 film “Three Faces” played in competition and won best screenplay.

Considered one of Iranian cinema’s greatest living masters, Panahi is known globally for prizewinning works such as “The Circle,” “Offside,” “This is Not a Film,” “Taxi,” and “No Bears,” winner of the Venice Film Festival’s 2022 Special Jury Prize.

On a cool fall night in October, just hours after Iran had launched rockets at targets in Israel, one of the Islamic Republic’s most famous dissidents sat a New York hotel restaurant and wondered if he’d ever get back home.

Mohammad Rasoulof had made one of the most politically potent feature films about the country in years — at great risk to his life — and all he wanted was to be back in the country he hopes to change.

“I walk in the U.S. or Europe and see people who are not me and ask myself: Can I belong? I want to be home,” the 51-year-old noted via a translator, a youthful dance in his eye given the ordeals he’s faced. “But it was more important to me to finish this project.”

“This project” is The Seed of the Sacred Fig, and it would be hard to...

Out of all the major filmmakers to emerge from Iran over the past decades, Mohammad Rasoulof has certainly grown into the most overtly political. His finely crafted, hard-hitting dramas, including the superb 2020 Berlin Golden Bear Winner There Is No Evil, make no qualms about tackling his country’s oppressive regime and religious theocracy head-on, pulling few punches in their depictions of a nation under siege.

This clearly explains why the director has been targeted by the Iranian authorities since 2010, when he was first arrested along with Jafar Panahi for shooting a movie in secret. After receiving a six-year prison sentence, he eventually got out on bail — only to be officially banned from leaving the country in 2017. He was arrested again in 2022, spent months in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, received an eight-year sentence in 2024 and finally decided to flee the country earlier this month, arriving just in time to premiere his latest film in Cannes.

In a surprising announcement, 51-year-old Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof will attend the premiere of “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” on Friday. The movie has one of the final competition slots and, unless it is an absolute dud, is a guarantee for one of the top awards considering the political statement it makes. As a direct result of making the movie, Rasoulof was sentenced to eight years in prison, had his property removed, and was due to receive a flogging. He fled the country on foot and is now somewhere in Europe.

Rasoulof, whose previous work includes “Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” “A Man of Integrity,” which won the top prize at Cannes’s Un Certain Regard sidebar, and “There Is No Evil,” which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. All of his films are critical of contemporary Iranian society, with “There Is No Evil,” about capital punishment,...

Once again, the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (Tidf) organized by the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (Tfai) , scheduled from May 10th to May 19th, 2024, is poised to unveil treasures of Taiwan's cinematic history. The festival's “Reel Taiwan” section will spotlight Taiwan's largest experimental documentary project to date, presenting avant-garde short films series Floating Islands exploring Taiwan's outlying islands. Meanwhile, the “Taiwan Spectrum” section, themed “Untitled Reel: Amateur, Small-gauge Films and Others,” will delve into amateur films shot on formats smaller than 35mm, capturing the essence of everyday life.

Floating Islands is a series of documentary shorts focusing on Taiwan's outlying islands, produced between 1999 and 2000 by the Firefly Image Company. The project was spearheaded by Zero Chou, who also served as a director in this ambitious endeavor that brought together 12 filmmakers from different generations. The resulting series of avant-garde documentaries offers subjective perspectives and reflects individual exploration processes. After twenty-four years,...

Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi has launched an impassioned appeal for production designer Leila Naghdipari to be released from jail following her recent arrest during demonstrations marking the one year anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death.

Naghdipari was one of hundreds of Iranians arrested on Sept. 16 during widespread protests marking the anniversary of Amini’s death while being detained for allegedly violating the country’s hijab law that mandates covered hair.

“Today, Iranian independent cinema is more that ever struggling to breathe under the boots of the security forces,” Panahi said in his appeal.

Panahi added that it’s been more than 10 days since the arrest of Naghdipari, who was the production designer on his 2018 film “Three Faces,” a road trip through the repressive territory of patriarchal rural Iran. Panahi shot the film, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival, in violation of his 20-year filmmaking ban.

“All the efforts of her husband Majid Barzegar,...

Kohn’s Corner is a weekly column about the challenges and opportunities of sustaining American film culture.

Cinema is a global industry, but Hollywood struggles to see beyond its own reflection. This past week, much was made about the international impact of “Barbie,” a mass-market takedown of the patriarchy that somehow has been able to screen in Saudi Arabia but not in Kuwait, and got banned in Algeria for “homosexuality and other Western deviances” a month after its release, presumably because censors decided to see “Oppenheimer” first.

Yet far less attention in the West has been paid to Iran, which did not screen “Barbie” or any other American movie this month, and shows no sign of doing that anytime soon. The Middle Eastern country banned the theatrical release of most foreign films years ago, which means that most Iranian audiences for Hollywood blockbusters come from the industry’s greatest foe: piracy sites.

The award-winning auteur was released from prison in February.

Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi has reportedly left Iran for the first time since 2009 after his travel ban was lifted, according to his wife Tahereh Saeedi.

A post by Saeedi on Instagram appeared to show her and Panahi at an undisclosed airport with a stack of suitcases. The caption read: “After 14 years, Jafar’s ban was cancelled and finally we are going to travel together for a few days.”

Observers on social media speculate that he is in France, based on the background of the image.

View this post on Instagram

A...

Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s travel ban has suddenly been lifted after 14 years, allowing the acclaimed auteur and his wife Tahereh Saeedi to reportedly leave Iran for an undisclosed location.

Saeedi on Tuesday night posted a picture on Instagram showing her arriving with her husband at an undisclosed airport.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tahereh saeedi (@taherehsaidii)

It is captioned: “After 14 years, Jafar’s ban was cancelled and finally we are going to travel together for a few days…”

Panahi, 62, was temporarily released from prison last month after going on a hunger strike to protest “the illegal and inhumane behavior” of Iran’s judiciary. He was out on bail.

The director was arrested last July in Tehran in the wake of the country’s conservative government crackdown. Panahi had gone to the Tehran’s prosecutor’s office to follow up on the situation of fellow dissident filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulov,...

Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi is reported to have left Iran for the first time in 14 years following the lifting of a travel ban imposed on him in 2009.

Panahi’s wife Tahereh Saeedi posted a picture on Instagram on Tuesday night showing her arriving with her husband at an undisclosed airport.

It was cryptically captioned: “After 14 years, Jafar’s ban was cancelled and finally we are going to travel together for a few days…”

Panahi is seen waving and pushing a luggage trolley laden with three large suitcases.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tahereh saeedi (@taherehsaidii)

There is no information on where the picture was taken although there have been suggestions on social media that the backdrop is a French airport.

Panahi – whose credits include The White Balloon, The Circle and Taxi – has spent most of his filmmaking career in the crosshairs of Iran’s authoritarian Islamic Republic government.

Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been released from Tehran’s Evin prison, his wife Tahereh Saeidi announced in an Instagram post. However, Panahi is out on bail and his case will be reviewed in March, so the release could just be temporary, according to several sources.

The director was released two days after announcing that he was going on a hunger strike to protest still being incarcerated after Iran’s Supreme Court had in last October overturned a six-year sentence issued against him in 2010 for “propaganda against the system”, ‘Variety’ reported.

That sentence had become obsolete due to the country’s 10-year statute of limitations. But the directors’ wife and lawyers said that Iranian security services were forcing the judiciary to keep Panahi behind bars.

“Although I am happy about Panahi’s release, it must be said that it should have taken place three months ago,” the director’s lawyer,...

A tragic saga rife with human rights violations and government overreach has narrowly avoided the worst possible outcome. Critically acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been released from prison after his unjust arrest in early July of 2022, which occurred in the midst of widespread protests centered on freedom of expression throughout the country. The filmmaker's wife Tahereh Saeedi revealed the good news on social media and other outlets (via Deadline) alongside her attorney Saleh Nikbakht, who said in a terse but vindicating statement:

"Although I am happy about Mr. Panahi's release, it must be said that his release should have taken place three months ago, following the acceptance of our objection to his previous court decision."

The court decision in question refers to the circumstances surrounding Panahi's original arrest in 2010, in which the director was handed a six-year prison sentence of "propaganda against the system" in retribution for attending the...

Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been released from Tehran’s Evin prison, his wife Tahereh Saeidi has announced in an Instagram post.

The director was released on Friday two days after announcing he was going on a hunger strike to protest still being incarcerated after Iran’s supreme court last October had overturned a six-year sentence issued against the director in 2010 for “propaganda against the system.” That sentence had become obsolete due to the country’s 10-year statute of limitations. But the directors’ wife and lawyers said that Iranian security services were forcing the judiciary to keep him behind bars.

“Although I am happy about Mr. Panahi’s release, it must be said that it should have taken place three months ago,” the director’s lawyer Saleh Nikbakht said in a statement on Friday. He noted that Panahi should have been released on bail last Oct. 18, the day his sentence was overturned.

Jafar Panahi has gone on a hunger strike to protest being still held in Tehran’s Evin prison even though Iran’s supreme court has overturned the conviction that led to the dissident director’s detention.

Panani has issued a statement from prison saying that to protest against the “illegal and inhumane” treatment by the Islamic Republic’s judiciary and security forces and their “hostage-taking” he will stop eating, drinking, and taking his medications until “maybe my lifeless body would be released from this prison.”

The statement announcing Panahi’s decision to go on a hunger strike was posted by Panahi’s wife Tahereh Saeedi and son Panah Panahi on their Instagram accounts.

Panahi, 62, is known globally for prizewinning works such as “The Circle,” “Offside,” “This is Not a Film,” “Taxi,” and most recently “No Bears,” winner of last year’s Venice’s Special Jury Prize. He was arrested last...

‘All The Beauty And The Bloodshed’ director Poitras will be the 2022 guest of honour.

All The Beauty And The Bloodshed director Laura Poitras will be guest of honour at the 2022 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), which has also set two Focus programmes and the theme for its new media section DocLab.

Fresh from winning the Venice Golden Lion for her Nan Goldin documentary All The Beauty…, Poitras has curated a ‘Top 10’ programme for the festival, of films she believes are key to the human condition. Titles announced so far include Steve McQueen’s Hunger, Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies...

U.S. director-producer Laura Poitras, who won an Oscar and an Emmy with Edward Snowden film “Citizenfour,” and recently took the Golden Lion at Venice with opioid epidemic pic “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” will be the Guest of Honor at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The 35th edition of the festival takes place from Nov. 9 to 20.

Poitras will be honored at IDFA with the Retrospective and Top 10 programs, in which she curates 10 films. The Top 10 program includes reflections on political imprisonment (“Hunger” by Steve McQueen; “This Is Not a Film” by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb), incarceration and psychiatry (Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies”), and genocide (Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”). As part of the Top 10, Poitras will be in conversation with several of her selected filmmakers during the festival’s public talks program.

In the Retrospective section, IDFA presents all seven films directed by Poitras from 2003 to today.

Oscar-winning director Laura Poitras will be guest of honor at the 35th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), running from November 9 to 20.

Poitras is currently on a packed festival tour with All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, which won the Golden Lion in Venice and is now an awards season contender. After Venice, the title screened in Toronto and has dates set for New York and the BFI London Film Festival.

As guest of honor at IDFA, Poitras will be feted with a retrospective and has also been given carte blanche to curate 10 films that have influenced her work and shaped her view of the world.

Her Top 10 selections include Steve McQueen’s Hunger, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb’s This is Not A Film, Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.

As part of the sidebar, Poitras will also conduct on-stage conversations with a number of the selected filmmakers.

Click here to read the full article.

Laura Poitras, the Oscar-winning director of Citizenfour, whose latest doc, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, won the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, will be this year’s guest of honor at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

IDFA will host a retrospective of Poitras’ work, screening all 7 documentaries she has directed, from her 2003 feature debut Flag Wars, made in collaboration with artist Linda Goode Bryant, a cinéma vérité film on the gentrification of a working-class African American neighborhood by white gays and lesbians, to All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which follows the career of photographer and artist Nan Goldin and her campaign to hold Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family responsible for the opioid addiction crisis. Poitras is perhaps best known for her portraits of Edward Snowden (the Oscar-winning Citizenfour) and Julian Assange (2016’s Risk).

Poitras will also curate...

Jafar Panahi’s career can now be split into two distinct sections: his work prior to an initial 2010 arrest amidst Iran’s Green Movement, and his creative response following that. The latter, ongoing now but complicated by a new six-year prison sentence he has just commenced, constitutes one of the stranger and more miraculous stretches of work for any internationally renowned filmmaker. It’s a period, beginning with 2011’s still-revelatory This is Not a Film—famously smuggled out of Iran and to Cannes on a Usb stick inside a cake—that found Panahi working prolifically while attempting to evade detection and further punishment by the authorities—these two currents fusing to engender international solidarity for a predicament putting his life, let alone freedom, at risk.

So here we are in late 2022 and the situation is terminal, though we mustn’t forget the shoots of hope from his son Panah’s...

In a strong show of support and solidarity, the 79th Venice International Film Festival honored Jafar Panahi by organizing an unprecedented flash-mob red carpet for the screening of his new film “No Bears,” despite the conspicuous absence of Panahi himself. The ceremony was a sad reminder of the shameful detention of him and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof by the Islamic Republic in Iran while his work was being celebrated on a prestigious international stage.

This was not the first time Panahi was absent at a festival screening of one of his films. He has been barred from leaving the country since 2010 when he was arrested and jailed for nearly three months on bogus charges of acting against national security. He was also banned from making films for 20 years, but he kept working surreptitiously in defiance of the absurdly unjust verdict. He strongly suspected at the time that the Islamic regime...

Venice jury head Julianne Moore joined activists from the International Coalition Filmmakers at Risk (Icfr) in a flash mob on the Venice red carpet Friday evening to call for the release of Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director who was detained in Tehran in July.

Venice jury member Audrey Diwan joined Moore on the frontlines of the protest alongside filmmaker Sally Potter, Orizzonti Jury President Isabel Coixet, and Venice festival head Antonio Barbera.

Venice Review: Jafar Panahi’s ‘No Bears’

The participants held placards depicting Panahi’s face alongside the message: “Release Jafar Panahi!”

The protest took place on the Palazzo Del Cinema red carpet prior to the screening of Pahani’s latest film No Bears, which screens in competition.

Panahi has been in custody since July 12 after going to the prosecutor’s office in Tehran to follow up on the whereabouts of filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad after they...

Every film Jafar Panahi makes is an act of resistance. Currently in jail, the Iranian director has spent the past 12 years in and out of house arrest, banned from traveling or making films outside Iran and faced with numerous obstacles making films at home. That hasn’t stopped him.

In No Bears, he goes to a village close to the porous border with Azerbaijan to tell a story involving a couple who are trying to get out to Paris with stolen passports, a film crew following them, a second young couple trying to escape a forced marriage and a village full of gossips and muckrakers. These villagers miss nothing, including the fact that Panahi, the visitor from Tehran, spends all day on his computer and only leaves his rented room after dark.

Merchant Of Venice Video Series Part IV – How Alberto Barbera Returned As Venice Leader And Transformed Fest Into...

There was an empty seat beside the name ‘J Panahi’ at the Venice Film Festival press conference for “No Bears.” The arthouse darling, famed for finding ingenious ways around draconian Iranian laws (“This Is Not a Film” was smuggled out of the country on a Usb stick buried in a cake posted from Iran to Paris), was detained in August to serve a deferred six-year sentence, amid a government crackdown that saw directors Mohammad Rasoulef and Mostafa Aleahmad locked-up too. In this sobering context, the harassment that Panahi-playing Panahi experiences in his lands all the more sickeningly and gestures to details that we are probably yet to discover.

Panahi is a director who has always mingled fact and fiction, and here the distinction is more addled than ever, so that by the time the final credits roll it’s not exactly clear what was staged and what was real. One...

When the definitive book on dissident filmmaking is written, it will have at least several chapters and a lengthy appendix dedicated to Iran’s Jafar Panahi, who has now covertly made five astonishingly resourceful features since being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian authorities in 2010. But given those circumstances, perhaps the biggest ongoing surprise of his career has been just how lively his illegally shot films have been — even while, as metafictions, they refer continually to the hampered circumstances of their creation.

“No Bears,” which premieres in competition in Venice, certainly starts in that register, with a rugpull or two and handful of seriocomic, absurdist observations on the foibles of Iranian village life. But then, as though it were anticipating the worsening political situation which culminated in Panahi’s detention in July 2022 for a six-year prison sentence, the mood darkens, prior to an ambiguous but devastating finale which seems to...

Iranian directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, both of whom are currently imprisoned and being detained by the Iranian government, are urging attendees of the Venice Film Festival to continue to push back against censorship and support independent expression.

The directors in a joint statement distributed by the Venice Film Festival on Saturday to press said that “The hope of creating again is a reason for existence.”

“The history of Iranian cinema witnesses the constant and active presence of independent directors who have struggled to push back censorship and ensure this art’s survival,” Panahi and Rasoulof said jointly. “While on this path, some were banned from making films, and others were forced into exile or reduced to isolation. And yet, the hope of creating again is a reason for existence. No matter where, when, or under what circumstances, an independent filmmaker is either creating or thinking about creation. We are filmmakers,...

The international trailer has been debuted for Jafar Panahi’s “No Bears,” which has its world premiere on Sept. 9 in competition at Venice Film Festival, before moving to Toronto Film Festival and New York Film Festival. Celluloid Dreams, which is handling world sales, has revealed territory deals with several distributors. Last month, Panahi was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment by the Iranian judiciary.

The political thriller/drama portrays two parallel stories of love. In both, the lovers are troubled by hidden, inevitable obstacles, the force of superstition and the mechanics of power.

Celluloid Dreams has closed deals with the following distributors: Picturehouse Entertainment (U.K.), Arp Selection (France), Academy Two (Italy), La Aventura (Spain), Golden Scene (Hong Kong/Macau), Impact Films (India), Midas Filmes (Portugal), Panda Film (Austria), September Films (Benelux), and Pt Falcon (Indonesia).

The cast includes Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobaseri, Bakhtiyar Panjei, Mina Kavani and Reza Heydari.

Above: Poster for Bamboo Dogs. Art by Soika Vomiter.Unless you’ve been going to film festivals around the world for the past 15 years you may not have heard of Khavn dela Cruz. I had not myself until a poster caught my eye recently. It was a design for Orphea, a 2020 collaboration between the venerable 89-year-old German filmmaker Alexander Kluge and an artist called simply Khavn. The poster had a certain iconoclastic energy and a stylish title treatment and so I decided to dig deeper. And there was a lot to uncover. Born in Quezon City in the Philippines in 1973, Khavn has made over 50 features and 150 shorts over the past 20 years, but he is also a musician with 40 albums to his name, and a writer who has published eight books of poetry, a novel, and two collections of short stories and has twice won the most prestigious literary award in the Philippines.

Khavn is the sorcerer of digital cinema, enchanting his way through the Filipino ether. He is an artist, a poet, a script writer, a punk rock musician and an excellent pianist. All his films are ‘This Is Not A Film By Khavn’, an ironic nod to the nature of film-making itself, a collaborative process. His irony is to raise an eyebrow at the idea of the auteur, though his films have a distinctive signature of ‘This Is Not A Film By Khavn’! Through his wit, Khavn is a thinker within cinema, exploring its limitations and potentials, making the most of small budgets and a small crew, within his compact cinematic experiments. Khavn is a director of short films, documentaries, as well feature films! “Squatterpunk” is one of his micro budget documentary films showcasing his off-the-cuff filmmaking style. There is an improvisational feel to this movie, but there is a well...

Above: Dau. DegenerationThere comes a scene in Dau. Degeneration, the smorgasbord of a film co- directed by Ilya Khrzhanovsky and Ilya Permyakov, when a pig is painted with anti-semitic and anti-democratic slogans, dragged out of a pigsty to a boarding house, where residents (mostly members of scientific community) are having dinner, and then savagely slaughtered and hacked to bits before them, by a ruthless Kgb-agent-in-training, as blood and guts gush out. The long scene’s visceral shock says much about Dau as a project—an endurance test of sorts, which the Dau directors and cast undertook by secluding themselves for three years to film what, by now, reportedly amounts to 700 hours of footage. The saga is dedicated to the malice of Soviet Russia, but, as one of the actors present at the Berlin Film Festival where the film premiered put it, truly to how Russia never digested its past,...

When Mohammad Rasoulof won the Golden Bear at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival, the Iranian director wasn’t there to accept his prize. Since 2017, when he returned to his home country after living abroad, Rasoulof has been banned from traveling internationally, and sentenced to a year in prison on propaganda charges.

However, the government has yet to imprison Rasoulof, permitting him to continue making the sort of brilliant, incendiary movies about life under Iranian autocracy that put him on the map. “There Is No Evil,” the final movie to screen in the Competition section of the Berlinale, turned out to be its most triumphant achievement — a defiant statement and galvanizing work of art.

“What I can observe from my own story,” Rasoulof said through a translator in a Skype interview from Tehran, two days before his festival win, “is that the satisfaction that you receive once you resist oppression and...

In Iran, executions are often carried out by conscripted soldiers, which puts an enormous burden on the shoulders of ordinary citizens. And what are we to make of the condemned, for whom guilt can sometimes be a capricious thing, dictated by a severe and oppressive Islamic regime — the same one that accused Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof of “endangering national security” and “spreading propaganda” against the government?

When Rasoulof returned from Cannes in 2017, following the premiere of his film “A Man of Integrity,” he was banned from filmmaking for life and sentenced to a year in prison. But as a man of integrity himself, the director could not stop. His latest film, “There Is No Evil,” premiered in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, where instead of being silenced, the government put on him.

The resulting feat of artistic dissidence runs two and a half hours, comprising four discrete chapters, each...

To begin with, a disclaimer: There are practically no 2019 titles on my Best of the Decade list, not because there weren’t a lot of great films this year, but because I haven’t had the opportunity to live with them for all that long. My Best of 2019 list was its own challenge to write, but this year’s movies are just too new for them to have knocked around in my central nervous system the way these earlier titles have. Film historians can debate the major movie-related events of the decade — the rise of streaming, the dominance of Disney — but these are the films took up residency with me and refuse to move out:

11-30 (alphabetically): “Anomalisa,” “Before Midnight,” “Bernie,” “Bridesmaids,” “Call Me By Your Name,” “Certain Women,” “Clouds of Sils Maria,” “Ex Machina,” “Force Majeure,” “The Great Beauty,” “The Handmaiden,” “Happy Hour,” “Holy Motors,” “Leave No Trace,...

Facts are so often stranger than fiction: The truth can be so terrible that we struggle to believe it, or so joyous and full of life that we’re inspired or moved. The past decade has seen a boom in the documentary space as streaming platforms have invested in their production and proliferated their distribution opportunities. So many docs that could have made this list, from those that have inspired public policy changes to others that captured gorgeous slices of life often overlooked, and even a few that pushed the visual boundaries of what’s possible in non-fiction storytelling. Here are just a handful of the best documentaries from the previous decade:

10. “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”

Alison Klayman’s documentary may have been many Americans’ introduction to Ai Weiwei, the outspoken artist (whose work has found a devoted following on social media) and controversial voice that the Chinese government has...

For the past few years, Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been sending a series of quietly confounding films to festivals that he’s not allowed to attend. “Three Faces,” which premiered in May 2018 at the Cannes Film Festival, is the latest of these little examples of his cinematic sleight-of-hand, and another Panahi gem that has more on its mind than it lets on.

“Three Faces” is typical of the canny director’s output in the way it’s modest but profound, leisurely but urgent, a portrait of a country disguised as a meandering road movie.

But it’s not like he’s using misdirection or only pretending to be modest and leisurely. Panahi’s films are all those things at once — and this one is particularly timely at this year’s Cannes in the way he manages, without openly criticizing his home country, to sketch a portrait of how the...

“Life is color.”

Ever since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran resulting in a drastic change in the country as a whole, its relationship to the world has always been troublesome to say the least. Leaving the political debates aside for a moment, its views on religious issues, women and culture have led to some rather schizophrenic works, for example, in the world of film. While directors such as Asghar Farhadi (“About Elly”) create works of social criticism, showing the state not as the antagonist of the story, but more like a silent, omnipresent entity influencing the lives of people, others have been censored and even put under house arrest. In his documentary “This Is Not a Film” (2011), Jafar Panahi shows how he deals with the ban of his films in his home country, the fears he and his family have to go through as an excruciating search for answers in...

The end of 2018 means there is only one year left before a massive wave of lists naming the best movies of the decade hits the internet. This time next year, critics will be furiously debating which film of the last 10 years stands out as the decade’s greatest achievement. While we’re still several months away from the decade lists, critics did take to Twitter over the Thanksgiving holiday to reveal their best films of each year since 2010, which is more or less a preview of the decade’s best films.

The lists started pouring in after Twitter user @RyanDubbbya went viral for asking which films were the best of each year this decade and posting his own list, which included the likes of “Black Swan” in 2010, Xavier Dolan’s “Mommy” in 2014, and the indie “Thunder Road” in 2018. The tweet took off with critics, as reviewers from IndieWire, RogerEbert.com,...

It’s well-known by the film community that director Jafar Panahi has been punished by the Iranian state due to the themes of his work. The 2010 sentence banned Panahi from making films for 20 years, in addition to six years under house arrest as well as denying him permission to travel outside the borders of Iran. The films made under these conditions—“This Is Not a Film” (2011), “Closed Curtain” (2013) and “Taxi” (2015)—have been justly celebrated.

Continue reading Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s ‘3 Faces’ Is A Modest, Humanist Gem [Fnc Review] at The Playlist.