This is Not a Film
Tehran, during the 2011 Iranian New Year. Panahi sits in his apartment, eating, watching the news, waiting to hear from his lawyer – who has filed an appeal against the government’s 20-year ban on his filmmaking. He’s tired of this involuntary inactivity. Bored, he begins to document his everyday life – reaching for his camera as an act of resistance. When his friend and colleague, the renowned documentarian Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, drops by, the pair discuss the precarious status of cinema in Iran. Then Panahi begins to move the furniture and mark the floor up with packing tape. He introduces a scene from a script the censorship authorities rejected: with a bit of imagination, we see a film that should not exist take shape.
Special Guests
One of the world’s great cinema artists, Jafar Panahi has been crafting self-reflexive works about political, artistic and personal freedom for the past three decades, despite being banned from filmmaking by the government of his native Iran since 2010. He is the only living filmmaker to win the top prizes at the Berlinale, Venice and Cannes, winning the Golden Bear for TEHRAN TAXI (SFF 2015), the Golden Lion for THE CIRCLE (SFF 2001) and the Palme d'Or this year for IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT.
Tickets
Sydney Film Festival acknowledges Australia’s First Nations People as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land, and pay respect to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, upon whose Country SFF is based.
We honour the storytelling and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia.
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