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No Bears

Directed by Jafar Panahi
2022
Iran
107 minutes
All Ages
Though banned from making films in Iran, Jafar Panahi won the Venice Special Jury Prize for his bold take on two parallel love stories thwarted by superstition and power.
Panahi (Tehran Taxi, SFF 2015; Three Faces, SFF 2018), only recently released from an Iranian prison on bail, both directs and stars in No Bears. What results are two powerful sagas unfolding onscreen. Panahi plays a fictionalised version of himself directing a film remotely from a small border village in Iran. Banned from leaving the country, his assistant director instead oversees the shoot in nearby Türkiye. In the film he’s making, a couple desperately tries to secure fake passports to escape to France. Whilst filming Panahi is swept up in a scandal surrounding another young couple’s forbidden romance. In this searing blend of truth and fiction, Panahi questions the role of an artist in societies only too willing to scapegoat them.
When the definitive book on dissident filmmaking is written, it will have at least several chapters and a lengthy appendix dedicated to Iran’s Jafar Panahi.
Jessica Kiang, Variety
Despite all that he has faced, Panahi retains the wit and humility to hold himself accountable – to question his art with remarkable candour and self-deprecation. Filtering his immense contribution to cinema through a deceptively incidental lens, he once again reminds us that movie-making can be a profoundly humane endeavour; at once comedic, tragic and truthful.
Mark Kermode, Observer

Tickets

Sun 11 Jun
6:15pm
Event Cinemas George Street - Cinema 4
Assisted Listening
Wheelchair
Subtitled
Past Event Cancel
Wed 14 Jun
12pm
State Theatre
Assisted Listening
Wheelchair
Subtitled
Past Event Cancel
Program Strand
Features
Original Title
Khers Nist
Year
2022
Classification
All Ages
Country
Iran
Language
In Farsi, Azeri and Turkish with English subtitles
Director
Jafar Panahi
Producer
Jafar Panahi
Cast
Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Mina Kavani
Screenwriter
Jafar Panahi
Cinematographer
Amin Jafari
Editor
Amir Etminan
Premiere
Australian Premiere
Genre
Cinephile, Festival Award Winners, Experimental, Filmmaking, Middle East
Company Credits
Sales Agent: Pascale Ramonda
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