Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning cinema of courageous resistance sees a man encountering someone he believes was his former prison torturer in this picture of genres that is tonally masterfully juggled, exploring themes of cycles of violence and circles of victimhood in Iran.
This Panahi-Kiarostami collab is an edgier though not always engaging part-‘thriller’, part-social critique about personal humiliation and vendetta as a delivery man is constantly reminded of his working-class status.
Panahi’s fourth feature since his house arrest is familiar in terms of his usual mode of cinematic address, but this time he paints a desolate picture of patriarchy rearing its ugly head amid some quiet moments of poetic beauty.
Panahi is literally in the driver seat, as he charts a new course for Iranian cinema (of the oppressed) in this powerful docu-drama that is as defiant as any in his oeuvre.
A political statement of intent by Panahi – one that is imbued with a sense of loss and frustration, yet shines brightly as a courageous beacon of hope for change.
This Venice Golden Lion winner is a powerful treatise on the plight of women in Iran, told through a refreshing bead-like narrative and shot in neorealist style.
You would expect no less than a meta-filmic experience from Panahi where he slyly—and sometimes angrily—comments on the shackles of traditions and laws in relation to freedom, but for once he overreaches with his creative approach.
Eternality Tan 