#fnc2015

ALMALIZA /  http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/en/films/almaliza INERNATIONAL SHORT FILMS COMPETITION AT Festival du nouveau cinéma ‪#‎FNC2015‬ (Montreal).

by Derek Godin

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi is a very prolific man for someone who was legally banned by his homeland’s government from making movies. Taxi, his latest effort, is the third film he has put out in the nearly five years since the ban was first instated. The first of these post-ban films, the cheekily-titled This Is Not a Film, had to be uploaded to a thumb drive and smuggled out of Iran inside of a cake (side note: any producers interested in hearing my pitch to turn that story into an Argo-esque caper are welcome to contact me). That film, along with its 2013 follow-up Closed Curtain, was shot in Panahi’s Tehran home in the utmost secrecy, so as to not draw the suspicion of the Iranian authorities. This makes it all the more incredible that Panahi would venture out into the open to make Taxi, but with great risk comes a greater reward: Taxi is a striking piece of filmmaking, a defiant act of creativity in the face of authoritarianism.