No Bears

The Iranian director Jafar Panahi makes no secret of where his sympathy lies. From humble origins himself, his father was a house painter, he portrays people in socially subordinate positions: the poor, women, children. He does this in a poetic, realistic way, which has won him numerous prestigious film awards. However, the Iranian government is not pleased with his films; the censorship forbids the screening, the judiciary is after him. In July 2022, shortly after the completion of his new secretly made film No Bears, he was arrested to serve the prison sentence he had been given in 2010.

The director Panahi, played by Panahi himself, is working on a film in a village on the Turkish border. He gets into trouble when the village council asks him to show the photo of a couple allegedly having a forbidden relationship. Panahi says he has not taken such a photo, but people do not believe him. Meanwhile, we see two love stories in which the lovers are opposed by superstitions and the mechanisms of power.