When we opened the remodeled Walker Cinema last June, we selected This Is Not a Film by Iranian Jafar Panahi as one our first screenings. His “film”–made during his house arrest in Tehran and reflecting on his pending six-year prison sentence and 20-year ban on making movies–was an in-the-moment diary tinged with humor but also the very real urgency of a man condemned and an artist silenced.
Today fellow Iranian, Abbas Kiarostami, announced Panahi has made another film.
“He has happened to have made his second film since he received his sentence,” Kiarostami tells IndieWire. “After his sentencing he made the film that played at Cannes, and since then he has made another. I guess it will be shown at another festival. So he is making films in Iran. I don’t know why, but that’s a reality people cannot deal with.”
“Some people stay in Iran and undergo the censorship, working however they can. Others, like me, decided to work elsewhere,” he added.
The power of cinema cannot be stopped.
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