Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (2015): Another Defiance of the Ban

The movie I am most looking forward to, coming soon to the New York Film Festival, with a release afterwards, is hounded/oppressed/gifted Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s Taxi.

Jafar Panahi, who directed angry funny award-winning films such as The White Balloon, Crimson Gold, The Circle, Offside, was arrested in 2009 under suspicion of making a film critical of the Iranian regime. (His films are all critiques of the regime.) The arrest made international news. He was imprisoned. He went on hunger strike. I was so crushed and upset I hosted an Iranian Film Blogathon, knowing it would do no good, but knowing also that tyranny requires privacy to do its worst. I wanted to do my part to deny the regime that privacy. All my Panahi stuff is here.

He was released, and then waited for his sentence, under house arrest. During that time, he made a film (illegally) in his own apartment called This Is Not a Film which was then snuck out of the country on a zip drive inside a pastry to premiere at Cannes. (The film is extraordinary, there is nothing else like it. The closest analogy, which I said in my review, is to Oscar Wilde’s “De Profundis.”)

Panahi’s sentence came down and it was devastating: a 20-year ban on film-making (Panahi is in his 50s), travel, and interviews with foreign journalists. Except for the travel part, Panahi has disobeyed all of those bans. He remains under house arrest, although his situation has loosened up a bit, and he continues to make films, albeit under outrageous limitations. Every time he makes a film he puts himself at risk. Anyone who appears in any of his films, collaborates with him, helps him, can expect to be harassed, arrested, or worse. (His partner on This Is Not a Film, who leant him the camera, was arrested, his passport taken away from him). It is a sign of his stature that people continue to act in his films, collaborate with him. They take those risks. After This Is Not a Film a couple years passed, and I had assumed that that, tragically, might be it. It was devastating. His situation is outrageous.

But then last year, another film came out. The Closed Curtain, which was on my Top 10 of last year. He can no longer shoot out on the streets of Tehran (all of his films are outdoor urban films), so he shot The Closed Curtain inside his summer house on the Caspian Sea. I found the film both valedictory and heart-wrenching. I couldn’t imagine what would come next. It seemed so final.

And now, God bless human freedom of expression and hang the consequences, Panahi has another film out. This one is called Taxi and it takes place entirely inside a taxi cab driving through the streets of Iran. You see how clever he is? How he gets around the ban? They’re just driving around, that’s all.

He himself plays the taxi driver.

I am going to a screening of Taxi in late September and I cannot wait. The trailer just launched and it looks amazing.

What is going on with Jafar Panahi is the most important thing happening in the cinema world today.

Jafar Panahi is the true definition of the word hero.