Deborah Ross

Astonishing cinema: No Bears reviewed

It's mind-blowing that jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi was able to make this wonderful, funny, engrossing film

Jafar Panahi as the director in his engrossing new film No Bears. Credit: © 2022 JP Production 
issue 12 November 2022

Jafar Panahi’s No Bears is, first and foremost, a wonderful film. More than this, you don’t need to know but I’ll tell you anyway. Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker, was banned from making films by the Iran government in 2010 yet has persisted clandestinely. One of his films (This Is Not a Film) was smuggled to the Cannes festival on a USB stick buried inside a cake.

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