Dogs have been banned as pets in Iran, providing the starting premise for Jafar Panahi’s Closed Curtain. A screenwriter (Kambozia Partovi, also the co-director) has a dog smuggled into his seaside villa by friends. Once the animal’s inside, the man systematically draws the curtains over windows on all three floors. The opening of Jafar Panahi’s Closed Curtain fictionalizes the necessary circumstances of its production: working in secret, the director was forced to draw the curtains for as much of the shoot as possible to make sure no one could see what was going on inside. There are echoes of recent scenes […]