Jafar Panahi

Acclaimed director Jafar Panahi drives a cab through the streets of Tehran, picking up a diverse group of passengers in a single day and capturing a spirited slice of Iranian society while brilliantly redefining the borders of comedy, drama and cinema. Each man, woman, and child candidly expresses their own view of the world, while being interviewed by the curious and gracious driver/director.

In his new virtuosic sleight-of-hand—completed shortly before his imprisonment in July 2022—Jafar Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, who has relocated to a rural border town in Iran to remotely direct a new film in nearby Turkey. While there, he finds himself thrust in the middle of a local scandal, confronting the opposing pulls of tradition and progress.

Narrated by Academy Award-winner Olivia Colman and secretly filmed in Iran by women and men who risked arrest, this film follows the work and life of renowned human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh.

They are both on the run: the man with the dog he is not allowed to own because Islamic law deems it to be unclean, and the young woman who took part in an illicit party on the shores of the Caspian Sea. They barricade themselves in a secluded villa with curtained windows and eye each other suspiciously. Why has he shaved his head? How does she know he is being followed by the police? They are now prisoners in a house without a view in the midst of a hostile environment. The voices of police can be heard in the distance, but so too can the calming sound of the sea. One time they look at the night sky full of stars before again withdrawing behind their protective walls. Are we looking at outlaws, or are the man and the young woman merely phantoms, figments of the imagination of a filmmaker who is no longer allowed to work?