Earlier this month, the irrepressible Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi found himself detained in Tehran and facing six years in jail. It’s the latest move in a long and largely fruitless campaign by the Iranian authorities to silence an artist who continues to be an international beacon of inspiration – not least to his son, Panah Panahi, who worked on his father’s most recent films, and who here makes his own triumphant feature debut as writer and director.
We meet the stars of Hit the Road in the borrowed car in which they will spend much of the film. Hassan Madjooni is the outwardly grouchy Dad, wrestling toothache and a broken leg, the authenticity of which is slyly doubted by Pantea Panahiha’s quietly exasperated but endlessly loving Mum. In the driver’s seat is their elder son (Amin Simiar), who is apparently on his way to get married, but whose real purpose will be only gradually revealed. And then there’s the younger brother, a six-year-old whirling dervish played by Rayan Sarlak who leaps around the car like an untrained puppy (the family’s actual dog, Jessy, is quietly ailing in the rear), and whose babbling observations on life, the universe and everything drive his family to distraction, but also remind us of Psalm 8:2: “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength.”
