- Special Focus on Iran
NO BEARS
Synopsis
Jafar Panahi is banned from making films and from leaving the country. In “No Bears” (Iran, 2022) he plays himself: he has rented a room in a village near the Turkish border and directs, by laptop, a film being shot across the border – the story of Zara (Mina Kavani) and Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei), who want to flee Iran with forged passports. Then a photograph surfaces that Panahi is alleged to have taken: it shows Gozal, who by old custom has been promised to a man since birth, with another man. The village elders demand that he hand over the picture or deny ever having taken it.
Iranian director Jafar Panahi shot this fifth film in secret as well, since his 2010 filmmaking ban. Documentary and fiction mirror each other: a director making a film about flight himself becomes the object of surveillance and superstition. In July 2022, Panahi was arrested in Tehran and sentenced to six years in prison; in Venice, where the film screened in competition, the festival protested on the red carpet. “No Bears” received the Special Jury Prize there. “No Bears” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2022 in the Special Focus on Iran section.
Festival
Shown at the 2022 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.
