No Bears
No Bears • 1h 47m
Directed by Jafar Panahi • 2022 • Iran
Starring Naser Hashemi, Bakhtiyar Panjeei, Vahid Mobaser
One of the world’s great cinematic artists, Jafar Panahi has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom for the past three decades, despite being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government since 2010. In NO BEARS—completed shortly before his imprisonment in 2022—Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, a dissident filmmaker who relocates to a rural border town to direct a film remotely in nearby Turkey and finds himself embroiled in a local scandal. As he struggles to complete his film, Panahi must confront the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, and the universal desire to reject oppression.
Up Next in No Bears
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Ramin Bahrani on NO BEARS
This interview with filmmaker Ramin Bahrani was recorded in 2023.
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Panahi Speaks from Prison
The Miami Film Festival awarded its Precious Gem Award to Jafar Panahi in 2022. Panahi, arrested on July 11, 2022 for protesting the incarceration of fellow filmmakers, sent this message while in prison.
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NO BEARS Trailer