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 Three by Jafar Panahi
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The White Balloon
Directed by Jafar Panahi • 1995 • Iran
Starring Aida Mohammadkhani, Mohsen Kafili, Fereshteh Sadre OrafaiyJafar Panahi’s revelatory debut feature is a child’s-eye adventure in which a young girl’s quest to buy a goldfish leads her on a detour-filled journey through the streets of Tehran on the ...
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The Mirror
Directed by Jafar Panahi • 1997 • Iran
Starring Mina Mohammad Khani, Aida Mohammadkhani, Kazem MojdehiIranian master Jafar Panahi explores the interplay of imagination and reality in this slyly inventive meta-film marvel. When her mother is late to pick her up from school, first grader Mina (Mi...
