No Bears (English Subs)

In parallel love stories, two couples have to deal with the social power structures in which they find themselves. At the same time, director Jafar Panahi (playing himself) unintentionally gets involved in a political row in the Turkey-Iran border village where he is directing a Turkey-set film from long distance. He is asked by village leaders to share a photo he took of a couple in a forbidden relationship. The drama escalates and it soon becomes clear how seemingly innocent artistic actions can have extreme consequences… Panahi, currently serving a six-year jail term in Tehran for, basically, making movies, reflects on his inability to leave his homeland, even though it would be as simple as stepping over an invisible border in the middle of the night, somewhere on a deserted hill…

‘There may be no living filmmaker who has considered the practical and philosophical implications of the art form—the work of shooting and cutting; the pleasure and anxiety of watching—as rigorously or as insightfully as the Iranian director Jafar Panahi… His movies are personal and also political, as he aims his quizzical gaze at the petty hypocrisies and large injustices of modern Iran, as well as at the paradoxes of his own creative practice.’—A.O. Scott, The New York Times