Jafar Panahi: “Remember, a few months ago, because they didn’t allow me to go outside of the house, I said, ‘OK, I’ll open my windows and take shots of the sky.'”

Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director who was convicted in 2010 of crimes against the Islamic Republic (for basically making films that criticized the regime), was given a 6-year prison sentence as well as a 20-year ban on making films/writing/giving interviews. Twenty years. The man is in his 50s. The sentence was a death-sentence for his art.

He is one of my favorite directors as well as a personal hero and his situation has been heart-wrenching.

He was arrested. Given a prison sentence. That was reduced to house arrest (mainly because of international outcry). Now he is allowed to circulate (somewhat) freely (although not outside of Iran), but he is still not allowed to make films.

HOWEVER.

He continues to make films. Despite the ban. One was mainly shot on his iPhone, which was then smuggled out of Iran on a zip drive inside a cake, to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. You cannot make this shit up. It is happening right now. Heroism like that exists. The stakes could not be higher.

To protest his arrest (I felt so helpless, I just wanted to do something – and wanted to create something that would highlight his achievements in a time when his voice was being silenced), I hosted an Iranian film blogathon in 2011. You can read all the amazing posts here.

I’ve written a lot about Panahi over the years.

At the Berlinale, in 2011 (which he was supposed to attend, but could not – since he was in prison and on hunger strike, so yeah, he was “detained”), he managed to, again, smuggle a letter out of Iran to Isabella Rosselini, president of that year’s Berlinale jury, to be read onstage. You can see her read that letter here.

Panahi’s letter closes with the unforgettable words:

Ultimately, the reality of my verdict is that I must spend six years in jail. I’ll live for the next six years hoping that my dreams will become reality. I wish my fellow filmmakers in every corner of the world would create such great films that by the time I leave the prison I will be inspired to continue to live in the world they have dreamed of in their films. So from now on, and for the next twenty years, I’m forced to be silent. I’m forced not to be able to see, I’m forced not to be able to think, I’m forced not to be able to make films. I submit to the reality of the captivity and the captors. I will look for the manifestation of my dreams in your films, hoping to find in them what I have been deprived of.

That heartbreaking moment was followed, amazingly, a month or so later – by the story of a film being smuggled out of Iran inside a cake to premiere at Cannes. Has such a situation ever occurred before? It was like a miracle. Panahi like a superhero. Omnipresent, and yet unseen.

That smuggled film was called This Is Not a Film (the snarkiness of the title was so delightfully revolutionary: “Okay, you told me I can’t make films, but this here is NOT a film, so we good now??”) The credits roll was a list of blank spaces. His co-director, who had loaned him a camera, was eventually arrested for his participation in the film and his passport taken away. Same with other people who have helped Panahi. Arrest. Imprisonment. Passports revoked.

By punishing Panahi’s friends, it has isolated Panahi even further. Panahi does not want to get more people in trouble.

I got to see This Is Not a Film at the 2011 New York Film Festival, and my review is here. I wrote it in the heat of the moment following seeing the film, with tears streaming down my face. Sometimes those first impressions are wrong. This one is not. This Is Not a Film is one of the most important films ever made, considering the circumstances under which it was made, and the courage of the man who made it.

But the story still is not over.

There have been rumblings for a while that Panahi, despite the ban, had made another film. Well, he has. It is called, ominously, Closed Curtain, and it’s being released next week.

Erik Kohn at Indiewire managed to get Panahi on the phone from Iran and conduct an interview with a translator. Here is the interview.

Please read.

And please take note of Panahi’s words in the interview with Kohn: International pressure – from the film community – from writers – from speeches being made about Panahi’s arrest on the stage at Cannes, or on the stage at Berlinale – international pressure DID have an impact. Iran was very sensitive to the fact that everyone was watching. This only highlights how much worse the situation is for people who AREN’T famous. But it also is an indictment of the passivity of those who choose to say, “But what can we do??”

Panahi says to Kohn:

I remember when they were threatening that they would keep me so long that I’d lose all my teeth. They would say that I was a special guest and they’d never let me go. But the international pressure forced them to let me go. Sometimes, people think the international pressure doesn’t influence [the government], that they don’t care about it. But that’s not true. When you are in prison, they try to make you cooperate with them. They promise you freedom if you cooperate. If they have to let you go, then they try to make your life outside prison so miserable that sometimes you wish you could do what they want. I worry about support from my colleagues inside the country because they may pay a price for me.

I have been devouring information about Panahi this morning, in lieu of Closed Curtain coming, and I feel such a mix of pain and hope at everything I am reading. What is happening to him is wrong.

Panahi’s films should be seen and celebrated. He continues to make films, at great risk to himself, putting himself in great danger.

A couple of posts I’ve written on Panahi’s films:

On The Circle: a film of interlocking interconnected stories about Iran’s appalling treatment of its women. Dark, bleak, brutal. It’s a circle, no way out. He offers no solutions, just presents the problem. (Panahi uses mostly non-professional actors and films out on the bustling crazy streets of Tehran – at least he used to. He is a totally urban filmmaker.)

On Crimson Gold: A stark and ruthless critique of the class divide in Tehran. Great characters. It’s really a heist movie, at its heart.

I have not written anything about The Mirror, but it’s amazing and one of the first films that brought him international acclaim. My friend Ted has some fascinating thoughts on it.

The White Balloon is great as well.

And, of course, This Is Not a Film, already mentioned.

And then my favorite of his films: Offside.

Offside is hilarious, fast-paced, snarky, rat-a-tat-tat dialogue, great situation and setup, and one of the best feminist films ever made. Women in Iran cannot attend soccer games in stadiums. They are banned. Many women dress up as boys in order to see the games. Here, in Offside, 6 girls (who don’t know each other), all dress up as boys in order to get into the stadium, and all of them are busted, and held in an open pen behind the stadium where, agonizingly, they can HEAR the screams of the crowd but cannot see the action. The Circle is dark and hopeless. Offside is angry, and yet the girls are so funny, so fierce, such bratty-brat mouthy sports fans, straining against their makeshift prison, trying to see what is going on on the field. Here is my review of Offside (or, one of them, I’ve written about it a bunch.)

One last comment about this incredible artist: His films have been banned in Iran. They never get play in movie theaters. But thanks to the internet and bootleg DVDs, his films have been widely seen in Iran. He is one of their most popular filmmakers. Take THAT, mullahs. Offside, of course, was a political film basically showing how SILLY it is to keep women from attending soccer games. I mean, Panahi thought it was so STUPID (and totalitarian governments can take a lot of things, but they cannot BEAR being thought of as SILLY). So, naturally, Offside was banned. However, once soccer season started that year, women in white veils grouped themselves outside the gates of soccer stadiums across Iran, holding up signs saying, “WE DON’T WANT TO BE KEPT ‘OFFSIDE’.”

It didn’t matter that Offside was banned. Everyone in the country saw it anyway.

His work makes a difference. His film gave a specific voice to a specific situation. Women were “heard,” and those signs were a callback to him. He is an extraordinary and important artist and it is absolutely outrageous what has happened to him. And yet here he is, yet again, with another film coming out. Shot entirely inside his own home – which is so against his natural style – it would be like Hitchcock making a hand-held street-gang movie. But that is what Panahi has to do, he has to film inside his own home, so that is what he will do. In order to keep making films.

I am glad he exists. But don’t get me wrong: I don’t see any of this as hopeful. I see it as infuriating and I see it as an artist making the best of a terribly unjust situation.

Again, here is the interview Panahi just gave to Indiewire.

This man will not be silenced.