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Movies & TV

Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi would probably have preferred to be lionized for his work, but when the Iranian director was arrested this past March by Iranian authorities – on vague charges that he was making a film critical of the country’s theocratic regime – he became an international symbol of resistance.

The Cannes film festival invited him to sit on the 2010 jury, in the hopes of getting him released when the festival opened in mid-May with Panahi still imprisoned, his chair remained symbolically vacant.

Panahi was released at the end of May, and immediately went to work on a short film, The Accordion, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. That short makes its Toronto premiere this week at the Lightbox as part of a TIFF Cinematheque retrospective of Panahi’s work, Jafar Panahi: Offside.

The tale of a filmmaker persecuted for challenging a repressive government brings to mind the didactic, hectoring political pictures of the 1960s, but Panahi’s story is much more complex than that. He doesn’t make screeds, and unlike several of his compatriots in the Iranian new wave, he’s been willing to experiment with different genres and styles. His most incisive political work – and the movie from which the Cinematheque series takes its name – was a comedy.

That’d be Offside, Panahi’s 2006 social study about a group of young women dressing up as men to sneak into a World Cup match – and almost immediately shunted into a holding area in the custody of a few young soldiers who’d really rather be watching the game themselves.

The resulting collision of attitudes and postures speaks volumes about the balance of power in modern Iran, and Panahi’s insistence that we see all of his characters as individuals with recognizable emotions and desires – rather than caricatures of righteousness and oppression from some pre-fabricated allegory – keeps the action rooted in a warm, considered humanity.

Offside screens Sunday and Thursday, double-billed with Crimson Gold, a 2003 thriller that uses Iran’s political instability as backdrop to a gripping crime drama. The two films nicely illustrate Panahi’s range as a filmmaker, so it’s good to see them paired up here.

Also showing in the retrospective are The Mirror (tonight and Tuesday) and The Circle (Saturday and Wednesday). The White Balloon, Panahi’s internationally embraced first feature about a little girl trying to buy a New Year’s goldfish, kicked off the series last night, preceded by the Toronto premiere of The Accordion both films screen again on Tuesday.

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