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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.

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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.

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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.

Although he is banned from travel outside his home country, and banned from filmmaking period, Iranian director Jafar Panahi continues to persevere, crafting movies that make their way to international festivals and theatrical release. At the New York Film Festival premiere of his latest work, 3 Faces, Panahi said via statement last night that he is “hopeful about the future of Iranian cinema” and offered a word of encouragement to others working under difficult circumstances.

In 2010, Panahi was arrested by the Iranian authorities and barred from making movies. He has continued to work, but still faces a prison sentence which has not been enforced. 3 Faces had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it won the Best Screenplay prize. Kino Lorber acquired the movie which it will release in March next year.

In NY on Monday night, Panahi’s friend, Iranian-American film scholar Dr. Jamsheed Akrami,...

Jafar Panahi’s latest film, 3 Faces, which is screening as part of the 56th New York Film Festival main slate, is another audacious triumph from a director who has confirmed his place as one of the most important filmmakers of the 21st century. Following his 2010 arrest and subsequent 20-year ban on filmmaking, 3 Faces marks the Iranian filmmaker’s fourth feature to be made without government authorization. After the lauded This Is Not a Film (2011), Closed Curtain (2013) and Taxi (2015), 3 Faces emerges as both a culmination and farewell to the strictures within which Panahi has flexed and maneuvered his cinematic vision over the last eight years. The film serves as an exemplary piece from which to reflect upon the continued political pertinence and cinematic innovation of Panahi’s filmmaking. As a collection, the post-ban films play out as an extended experiment in the possibilities of viable filmmaking under extreme censorship restriction.

Jafar Panahi’s drama 3 Faces, which won the best screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is getting a theatrical release in the U.S. after Kino Lorber picked up the feature.

The company will roll out the film, which stars Panahi and Behnaz Jafari, in theaters in March 2019 followed by a VOD and home vide release.

The film is set to have its North American premiere at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival and will have its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival.

3 Faces stars Panahi and Behnaz Jafari, both playing themselves, as they travel to the rural northwest of Iran after receiving a plea for help from a girl whose family has forbid her from attending a drama conservatory in Tehran. Amusing encounters abound, but they soon discover that the local hospitality is rivaled by a desire to protect age-old traditions.

Kino Lorber has snatched up U.S. rights to 3 Faces, the Iranian drama from director Jafar Panahi, which won the best screenplay prize this year at the Cannes Film Festival.

Like his previous three features, Panahi made 3 Faces in secret while under an official 20-year ban from filmmaking imposed by the Iranian government in 2010.

Kino Lorber has released some of Panahi's previous works, including Taxi, which won the Berlin Festival's Golden Bear for best film in 2015. Kino Lorber also did an ancillary market release for Panahi's 2012 feature This Is Not a Film, which the director partially shot on ...

Kino Lorber has snatched up U.S. rights to 3 Faces, the Iranian drama from director Jafar Panahi, which won the best screenplay prize this year at the Cannes Film Festival.

Like his previous three features, Panahi made 3 Faces in secret while under an official 20-year ban from filmmaking imposed by the Iranian government in 2010.

Kino Lorber has released some of Panahi's previous works, including Taxi, which won the Berlin Festival's Golden Bear for best film in 2015. Kino Lorber also did an ancillary market release for Panahi's 2012 feature This Is Not a Film, which the director partially shot on ...

Kino Lorber has acquired U.S. rights to Jafar Panahi’s critically lauded drama “3 Faces,” which won the best screenplay prize at the Cannes Film Festival and will have its North American premiere at Toronto.

“3 Faces” marks the fourth feature from Panahi, who since 2010 has been under a 20-year ban imposed by the Iranian government. The film stars Panahi and well-known Iranian actress Behnaz Jafari (both playing themselves) as they embark on an eventful road trip to the rural northwest of Iran to help a girl whose family has forbidden her from attending a drama conservatory in Tehran. They soon discover that the local hospitality is challenged by a desire to protect age-old traditions.

Delivering a realistic portrayal of contemporary Iranian society, “3 Faces” was described by Variety’s Jessica Kiang as a “heartfelt statement of solidarity” and a “quietly fierce act of cinematic defiance.”

The acquisition reteams Panahi with Kino Lorber,...

We are now eight years into the 20-year filmmaking ban imposed on Iranian director Jafar Panahi, for allegedly making propaganda against his country’s regime. “3 Faces” is the fourth film he has made illicitly under conditions a lesser director might find paralyzing. But Panahi’s irrepressible, mischievous storytelling instinct has with tenacious regularity found its way through the cracks and onto the biggest international stages, even though the man himself cannot leave the country.

“This Is Not A Film,” “Closed Curtain,” and Berlin Golden Bear winner “Taxi” were all metafictions that saw him kick against those insupportable restrictions by making them his subject, and it’s been fascinating to watch the rough-and-ready style he developed out of necessity evolve into something of a distinctive aesthetic. That stylistic evolution continues with “3 Faces,” most noticeably with Amin Jafari’s graceful, often bravura handheld camerawork. But the really absorbing paradox here is that...

Jafar Panahi was banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government, but the decree only led him to make movies in a different kind of way. Starting with the meta-documentary “This Is Not a Film” in 2011, Panahi’s creative frustrations have taken center stage in various inventive ways: In “Closed Curtain,” the allegorical tale of thieves on the lam folds into a broader creative lament when the filmmaker enters the frame to contemplate his characters, while the acclaimed “Taxi” found his camera exclusively in the confines of the titular vehicle as Panahi drove around Tehran.

The fourth entry in this innovative period, “Three Faces,” finds him acting in another story seemingly pulled from his real experiences — although this time, he’s more of the supporting character in a meandering but often insightful exploration of censorship and oppression in a society that accepts those phenomena as facts of life.

It starts with a call for help.

At the conclusion of Wednesday’s morning Cannes press conference for Asghar Farhadi’s latest film, the festival opener “Everybody Knows,” the Iranian filmmaker snuck in one last comment, unprompted by the assembled crowd of international press or his starry cast of heavy-hitters like Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. After the conference wrapped, the “A Separation” filmmaker requested to have his microphone back, so that he could issue a comment on a situation clearly close to his heart.

“I thought perhaps we could go on to one last point,” he said. Farhadi pointed out that his is not the only Iranian film in competition this year, but that his fellow countryman Jafar Panahi was not in attendance to support his film “Three Faces” because of his ongoing house arrest in 2011 for charges of making propaganda.

The “Offside” and “The Circle” filmmaker was also banned by his own country from making films for twenty years,...

In a first for Jafar Panahi, the lauded Iranian filmmaker has a berth in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival with his latest work, Three Faces. What is not clear is if he will be allowed to travel to the Riviera for the honor. In 2010, Panahi was arrested by the Iranian authorities and banned from making films. He has continued to work, but is unable to leave Iran and still faces a prison sentence which has not been enforced. Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux said today that the festival will appeal to Iran for the filmmaker’s presence.

The same goes for Kirill Serebrennikov, the theatrical producer and director who is under house arrest in Russia. He has been invited to the festival in competition for the first time with Leto (Summer) about the life of Soviet rock star Viktor Tsoi and the Leningrad rock underground of the 80s.

The London Iranian Film Festival is only in its second year, but already it boasts an enchanting and highly professional-looking trailer, as well as a varied line-up of films that blast open the old 80s stereotype of Iranian films as being superficially sweet studies of childhood in which social commentary was necessarily covert. It is of course important not to lose sight of the real censorship and official bullying of filmmakers that takes place in Iran, the most infamous example at the moment being Jafar Panahi. The London Iranian Film Festival has certainly not forgotten Panahi: it screened his new documentary, This Is Not a Film (In Film Nist, 2010), which records his struggle against the 6-year prison sentence and 20-year ban on filmmaking imposed by Iranian authorities last December.

The festival demonstrates the inspiring variety of contemporary Iranian filmmaking. Obviously, this year’s festival had to include A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin,...

The annals of filmmaking are filled with stories of people who managed to make films against all odds, without money, without shooting permits, without proper professional equipment. This Is Not a Film, or In Film Nist, the 75-minute film directed by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb that has screened here out of competition, may be the ultimate achievement in stealth filmmaking, considering that Panahi is currently serving a six-year jail sentence and has been banned by the Iranian government from making films for 20 years. And yet somehow he has made a movie that has found its way to one of the world's major film festivals: This Is Not a Film is a small but extremely significant message in a bottle.

All the latest news, reviews, comment and buzz from the Croisette, as it happens

9.15am: Morning all. Well, it's the morning after Britain's big night at this year's Cannes film festival, when Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin, wildly received by the critics yesterday, got its turn on the red carpet.

We've just launched this reel review on the movie, which also includes various pundits' take on the film, as well as that of our own Xan Brooks. Sample quote: "I'm still scared."

9.26am: So what else is on the cards today? Well we'll be updating our gallery from last night, then in an hour or so we'll launch another video – Xan's exploits wandering round the Marché, that fantastic flogging ground for weird and wonderful flicks. Then we'll have a first review of Habemus Papam, Nanni Moretti's hot potato film about the Pope, plus Xan's diary of the day,...