No Bears

“Cut!” A director banned from working or leaving Iran is nevertheless in the process of making a new film, remotely, via video – about a couple who want to emigrate from Turkey to the West. The director is of course Jafar Panahi, again playing a fictionalised version of himself and making ingenious use of highly restricted circumstances. While his crew works on-site in a Turkish border town, Jafar explores the Iranian village just across the border where he’s staying, camera in hand. When he’s accused of taking an incriminating photo, he finds himself enmeshed in a local drama. In the fifth and perhaps most subversive film he’s made under his ban, Panahi questions the role of the artist in a society all too willing to scapegoat them.