Sydney Film Festival – Jafar Panahi: Cinema in rebellion

‘I don’t make political films, I make humanistic films. Political films always take sides; they dictate and try to tell us what’s right and what’s wrong. A humanistic film would never do that. Instead of searching for the roots of a phenomenon, it merely bears witness to it.’ – Jafar Panahi

One of the world’s great cinema artists, Jafar Panahi has been crafting self-reflexive works about political, artistic and personal freedom for the past three decades, despite being banned from filmmaking by the government of his native Iran since 2010.

Born in 1960 in the city of Mianeh, Panahi served in the army during the Iran–Iraq War before attending film school in Tehran. He began his career with a series of short films and documentaries for Iranian TV, after which he approached Abbas Kiarostami, already an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, and asked for a job. It would prove a pivotal moment: Kiarostami made him assistant director on Through the olive trees (1994) and then, duly impressed with Panahi, agreed to write the screenplay for his feature-length debut, The white balloon. Panahi describes him as his most important mentor.

Like Kiarostami, Panahi prefers to work with non-professional actors, and to shoot on location. He favours an episodic narrative structure: simple stories drawn from everyday life in Iran, which, casually yet brilliantly, capture repressive structures and social injustices – things his heroes, big and small, know how to defend themselves against, often with wit and ingenuity.

Panahi’s films radiate a deep connection to the culture and people of Iran, but they do not fit the official image of the regime. He has been imprisoned three times, accused of ‘propaganda against the regime’ (most recently in 2022), and, even before 2010, most of his films were banned in his home country.

Part of Panahi’s subversive strategy is to represent himself on screen, becoming the very medium through which the narrative is transmitted. He reacts to the mandate of invisibility with a pointed, principled visibility, imbued with quiet irony. In this act of rebellion is a radical, radiant hope.