Jafar Panahi
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Dreams Deferred: How Iranian Filmmakers Pursue Liberation Under Unbearable Constraints
The people of Iran find themselves suspended in a historical moment of great uncertainty. On December 28, 2025, in the midst of a major economic crisis exacerbated in part by U.S. sanctions, shopkeepers and vendors in several commercial centers throughout the country went on strike. The protests grew larger in number, culminating in early January as Iran’s largest uprising since the 1979 Revolution. The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) responded by imposing an internet blackout to facilitate the indiscriminate murder of protesters and civilians alike. Thousands were killed in the largest massacre in the nation’s history, and the periodic protests […]
by Nick Kouhi on Apr 2, 2026 -
“My Method is Invisible Editing”: Editor Amir Etminan on “It Was Just an Accident”
From its opening head-on shot of a family driving down an unlit road to its devastating, confrontational climax, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident frequently deploys long takes to situate the audience within moral discomfort. While that formal restraint runs through the entire film, it still leaves room for a diverse editing style befitting Panahi’s first feature since the suspension of his twenty-year filmmaking ban. (Following the film’s release, the Iranian government has subsequently sentenced him to one year in prison in absentia for “propaganda activities.”) In its shot selection and fluctuating cutting rhythm, It Was Just an Accident […]
by Sabine Hoffman on Dec 17, 2025 -
Cannes 2025: It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent
Sentenced by the Iranian government in 2010 on spurious grounds to six years in prison, a punishment that came with a 20-year ban on making movies, Jafar Panahi immediately set about violating the latter. Title notwithstanding, 2011’s This is Not a Film was what I’d call an “actual movie,” spry and self-reflexive like his first two features, 1995’s The White Balloon and 1997’s The Mirror. The post-Film features that followed—Closed Curtain, Taxi, 3 Faces and No Bears—merited that first post-ban title more. Leaning upon his undeniably courageous status as a (since) multiple-times-jailed dissident filmmaker, those works foregrounded the director as a benign […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 23, 2025 -
TIFF 2022: No Bears, La Pupille
I got out of a jam-packed P&I screening of Jafar Panahi’s No Bears literally two minutes after the Venice Film Festival announced a special jury prize for the film. It’s probably not overly cynical to attribute at least part of both my screening’s high attendance and the festival’s award to the sad news that the director is back in jail—his status as a high-profile Iranian dissident is inextricable from his work since 2011 when, under house arrest and banned from making movies, he started making features with him front and center as the lead protagonist. That on-screen character is by now […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 10, 2022 -
Trailer Watch: Jafar Panahi’s No Bears
The first trailer has arrived for acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s No Bears, which features the director starring as a version of himself. According to the official synopsis, the film follows “two parallel love stories in which the lovers struggle with hidden and unavoidable obstacles, the force of superstitions and the mechanics of power.” Along with the film’s new trailer, Celluloid Dreams has uploaded two snippets from the film to their YouTube channel: one scene that contextualizes the film’s title, and another that depicts the oft-paradoxical hurdles Panahi faces in continuing his cinematic practice. A politically defiant and visually vital filmmaker, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Aug 18, 2022 -
Venice Film Festival Announces 2022 Lineup
The lineup for the 79th Venice Film Festival is now live, one day after Noah Baumbach‘s adaptation of Don Delillo’s novel White Noise was announced as the opening night film. The films announced today include Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde, Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale, Joanna Hogg‘s The Eternal Daughter, recently jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi‘s No Bears, Frederick Wiseman‘s narrative turn A Couple and more. White Noise marks the first time that a Netflix film serves as the festival’s opening night film. The streamer is also present with Dominik’s Blonde, the Nicolas Winding Refn mini-series Copenhagen Cowboy and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Bardo (or False […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 26, 2022 -
“For Us Iranians, the Car Has Become a Second Home”: Panah Panahi on His Debut Feature, Hit the Road
Hit the Road, the debut feature from writer/director Panah Panahi, is a 93-minute long goodbye of aptly sweet sorrow. Panah, 38, is the son of Jafar Panahi, one of the undisputed titans of Iranian art-house cinema. Having served as an assistant on his father’s films and edited his most recent feature (3 Faces), Panah emerges with Hit the Road as a filmmaker with a slyly unclassifiable take on the family road movie. Panah has called Hit the Road in many ways “the opposite of Jafar’s cinema,” but the film shares at least one key quality with his father’s work: It’s […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Apr 22, 2022 -
Watch: Jafar Panahi Speaks in Favor of the Iran Deal
Jafar Panahi has succeeded in making three features since being sentenced from filmmaking for 20 years, and now he’s contributed a brief video statement to We Support Iran Deal, a self-described group of “Iran’s pro-democracy & human rights activists, prominent artists, & cultural figures.” A full translation can be found here.
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 25, 2015 -
Trailer Watch and Poster: Jafar Panahi’s Taxi
Here’s the US trailer and poster for Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, the third film the Iranian director has made despite an official 20-year-ban on him making movies. Behind the wheel, Panahi criss-crosses Tehran, picking up passengers whose interactions with him again blur the line between fact and fiction. The film will be playing at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival before in opening in New York on October 2, with limited national release to follow. A current list of scheduled playdates and more information from distributor Kino Lorber can be found here. You can also check out two scenes from the film we posted […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 17, 2015 -
Dispatches from Sundance, Berlin, SXSW, True/False & Thessaloniki
Sundance SCOTT MACAULAY Check it out: the two top prize winners at Sundance this year, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack, both feature as central elements teenagers who stage and film their own versions of classic movies. There’s even overlap between the two films, although Moselle’s Manhattan shut-ins incline more towards Tarantino and Freddy Krueger, while Gomez-Rejon’s teen Pittsburgh auteurs shirk the Romero roots of their hometown for deep dives into the Criterion Collection. For film lovers of a certain age, both Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and The Wolfpack […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 28, 2015
