Iranian director Jafar Panahi makes no secret of where his sympathies lie. Coming from a humble background himself – his father was a house painter – he portrays people in socially marginalised positions: the poor, women and children. He does so in a poetic, realistic style, which has earned him countless prestigious film awards. The Iranian government, however, takes no kindly to his films; the censors ban their screening, and the authorities are after him. In July 2022, shortly after completing the secretly made No Bears, he was arrested to serve the prison sentence imposed on him in 2010. After seven months, he was released on bail.

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 them a photograph of a couple said to be in a forbidden relationship. Panahi says he did not take such a photograph, but no one believes him. Meanwhile, we see two love stories in which the lovers are thwarted by superstition and the mechanisms of power.