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.