As Iranian women rise up against their misogynist bullies, this is a good time to watch Jafar Panahi’s latest film, set in a village whose inhabitants are encouraged to be scared of supposed “bears” roaming the countryside – just as the Iranian people are supposed to be afraid of their morality police. No Bears is a complex, mysterious metafiction about the anguish of Iran and the artist working within Iran. Its creator, film-maker and democracy campaigner Panahi, has recently been sentenced to six years in jail after long periods of house arrest since a bogus propaganda charge in 2011.
Panahi plays “Jafar Panahi”, a film director who is forbidden to make films or leave the country. So his new movie is shooting in a small Turkish town just over the border; it stars an Iranian couple, Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei) and Zara (Mina Khosravani), based on their own actual ordeal in trying to escape Iran for good. Panahi has delegated the hands-on direction to his assistant Reza (Reza Heydari), and he is watching the filming via Skype. He could easily do this from Tehran, but due to a compulsion to be close to the action (and to freedom), Panahi is doing this from a rented room in a tiny Iranian village just a few miles the other side of the border. The villagers themselves have accepted his cover story that he is there to photograph local customs, including a forthcoming wedding.
