In a small Iranian village located very close to the Turkish border, a filmmaker witnesses a love story while he is filming another by giving his instructions to his assistant by videoconference. Will tradition and politics get the better of both?
Jafar Panahi’s most recent films always take on an event aspect. No bears is the fifth feature film shot by the famous Iranian filmmaker despite his conviction for “propaganda against the Iranian government”. In 2010, the director of Taxi Tehran was sentenced to a six-year prison term and a 20-year movie ban. Last year, in July, he was arrested and thrown into jail to serve his sentence. According to the latest news, he was still behind bars, at the very moment when popular protests – led particularly by Iranian women – are trying to bring down the mullahs’ regime.
Filmed clandestinely before the arrest of the filmmaker, No bears stands out from the outset by its tone, which is much more serious than in the filmmaker’s previous feature films. Playing his own role, Jafar Panahi, far from his usual good nature, tells two parallel stories, the main one being the one which puts him on stage with a small film crew, filming actors who, themselves, found in Turkey. Unable to leave Iran, the filmmaker gives his instructions by videoconference from a small village located very close to the Turkish border, where the clash between the urbanites of Tehran and the rural people of the village – between modernity and tradition – is revealed. quite intense. At the same time, the immigration desires of the Iranian couple that Panahi is filming are struggling with a heavy bureaucracy…
Very skillfully, the filmmaker leads the viewer into a story that is both fascinating and complex, where all the types of borders faced by citizens who have to live under the yoke of a totalitarian regime are evoked. Between those, physical and concrete, imposed by the authorities, and the others, psychological, which one imposes on oneself because it cannot be otherwise, No bears illustrates how the system manages to intertwine everything to establish its power over individuals. The result is a powerful political film, made at a time when Jafar Panahi no doubt sensed the darker days ahead for him. And for his country.
Winner of the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival, during which a first version of this text was published, No bears (also known by its international title No Bears) is now playing.
Indoors
Drama
No bears
Jafar Panahi
With Naser Hashemi, Reza Heydari, Jafar Panahi
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