In 2010 Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison plus a twenty-year ban on all artistic activities that includes filmmaking. Under these restrictions, he co-directs his second film (the first This Is Not a Film) with Kamboziya Partovi.
Beginning with a stunning long shot outside the barred window of a seaside home, a car pulls up and a man (Kambuzia Partovi) enters the house. He unzips a bag and let’s his pet dog out. Details slowly emerge, the man is a paranoid writer (he blacks out all the windows in the house), who hides his dog because of a countrywide purge. One night, after leaving his door open, a young woman and her brother slip into the house.
It’s from this starting point that Panahi begins a meta-narrative surreptitiously expressing and exploring what it means to live and be a creative person under such repression.
Without the knowledge of Panahi’s real life, the film would be hard to follow but considering the minimal means at Panahi’s disposal and everybody involved participated not only out of artistic and political conviction but at great personal risk, this is a potent testament to the power of art and protest.