Iran’s pro-democracy and women’s rights demonstrations have made the headlines this year, and Iranian cinema has been bringing us the news as well. This outstanding film is from 38-year-old Panah Panahi, son of the renowned director and activist Jafar Panahi, who this year was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for criticising the Iranian government.
It’s a road movie, of sorts, but also part of the modern Iranian cinema tradition of shooting a film in the privacy of a car, a quasi-guerrilla approach that gets the film-maker out on the streets while avoiding state snooping. A family is shown making a hot, uncomfortable road trip in a borrowed car up through remote north-western Iran, heading for the Turkey/Azerbaijan border.
The eldest son is at the wheel, reserved and clearly suppressing an emotion of some sort. Riding shotgun is his mum, bantering drily with her husband in the back, whose broken leg in a plaster cast is making him grumpy, as is his constant desire to smoke. And next to him is the driver’s wacky eight-year-old kid brother: a lovely performance from Rayan Sarlak, and next to him their lively dog. The family are lying to this little boy about why his big brother is leaving the country: they have told him he is just leaving temporarily to get married.
But very clearly there is something more to it than that, as they are continuously paranoid about being followed and about using mobile phones – which can be tracked. The elder brother needs to get out of the country, and fast. This could be a permanent farewell, an anguish that the grownups are all withholding from the little kid. Sadness underlies every moment, and yet it has a wonderful comic energy and invention: this is such a lovely film.
