DIRECTOR/SCREENPLAY: Jafar Panahi
AWARDS: Golden Bear (Best Film), Berlin International Film Festival 2015
FESTIVALS: Berlin 2015

REVIEW

The great Iranian director Jafar Panahi (Offside, The Circle) has never let being barred from filmmaking stop him. For the third time since the ban was imposed, he’s managed to apply his considerable art to production on a very small scale – and to get the resulting work out of Iran and into competition at a major international film festival.

In Tehran Taxi, shot entirely inside a car, he poses as a cab driver and films interactions with a succession of lively customers, not least his own feisty niece who’s making a film too. It’s never entirely clear whether the passengers are aware of their participation, adding an ambiguity all the more teasing for being in their best interests. The surprisingly informative, entertaining and layered sampling of life in Tehran that emerges won the Golden Bear for Best Film at Berlin.
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“A priceless cinematic lesson, proving once again that if you know what you want and how to express it, the whole mystical paraphernalia of filmmaking and its inflated budgets is not really necessary… More than ever before, Panahi’s composite picture of contemporary Iranian reality puts on a satirical shape, but the melancholy smile on the driver’s face – and in this case driver and director are one and the same person – is more eloquent than any piece of dialogue.”

— Dan Fainaru, Screendaily

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Palmerston North     
Wednesday, 14 April, 6:00pm

Nelson     
Tuesday, 20 July, 6:00pm

Queenstown     
Tuesday, 3 August, 8.15pm

Tauranga     
Tuesday, 14 September, 6:00pm

New Plymouth     
Wednesday, 27 October, 6:00pm

Westport     
Wednesday, 10 November, time tbc
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