Films with: Panahi, Jafar

Ayneh The mirror /

When Mina's mother fails to pick her up after school, the little girl sets off by herself and is thrust into a perilous adventure in an adult world.

DVD 3519

Badkonake sefid The white balloon/

Seven-year-old Razieh has her heart set on a plump multi-finned goldfish she has seen in Tehran's market-place. Despite having many similar in the ornamental pond at home, she is determined to get the one she wants before the New Year celebrations begin in a few hours. Skilfully cajoling her mother into parting with her last 500 Toman note, she races into the dangerous and disorienting bustle of the city and her epic adventure begins.

DVD 6053

Cerchio The circle /

A woman is afraid to tell her pregnant daughter's in-laws that the expected male child did not arrive--it is a girl instead. A group of women recently released from prison can't escape from being prisoners. A destitute mother tries to abandon the daughter she can't provide for. The police pick up a prostitute while her customers go free. In the fundamentalist theocracy of Iran, these women have all committed an eternal crime: being female. Surrounded by suffering and oppression, the world closes in on these women, limiting those choices that haven't already been made for them, along the narrow, tragic paths of Iranian womanhood.

DVD 1311

Iran une revolution cinematographique /

Traces the development of the Iranian film industry, which has always been closely intertwined with the country's tumultuous political history, chronicling how Iranian films reflected contemporaneous society and often presaged social change. It shows how mainstream commercial cinema served as a propaganda tool for both the monarchy and the fundamentalist religious regime, recounts the sporadic efforts of some filmmakers to reveal grimmer social realties, and the struggles against censorship and traditional cinematic formulas by such pioneers as Bahram Beyzai and Sohrab Shahid Saless and pre- and post-Islamic revolutionary 'new wave' filmmakers.

DVD 4855

Īn fīlm nīst This is not a film /

This clandestine documentary, shot partially on an iPhone and smuggled into France on a usb drive hidden in a cake for a last-minute submission to Cannes, depicts the day-to-day life of acclaimed director Jafar Panahi (Offside, The Circle) during his house arrest in his Tehran apartment. While appealing his 2010 sentence (six years in prison and a 20-year ban from filmmaking, interviews or leaving the country) Panahi is seen talking to his family and lawyer on the phone, and discussing his plight with his friend and collaborator, Mirtahmasb.

DVD 11336

Offside

The Tehran soccer stadium roars with 100,000 cheering men and only men. According to Islamic custom, women are not permitted to watch or participate. The ambitious girls who manage to sneak into the arenas are caught and sent to a holding pen, guarded by male soldiers their own age. Duty makes these young men and women adversaires, but duty can't overcome their shared dreams, their mutual attraction, and ultimately their overriding sense of national pride and humanity.

DVD 5200

Taxi

Jafar Panahi drives a yellow cab through the vibrant streets of Tehran, picking up a diverse group of passengers in a single day. Each man, woman, and child candidly expresses his or her own view of the world while being interviewed by the curious and gracious driver.

DVD 11299