By Pablo Suárez
For the Herald

“I project and design each one of my films according to the content of the story. My five films begin with a long take. In The White Balloon, the camera is where the director, an occasional passer-by, or the audience is located. From that viewpoint, it observes an endless number of potential situations that could generate the story of the film, but neither the camera nor the spectator can decide which of these situations to follow. Suddenly, amid this mayhem, a female face whose features are marked by both anguish and anxiety appears and stands outs from the rest. Immediately, the camera wants to follow that one woman,” stated Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, and he added: “But this woman isn’t important in the story. The critical point is that at the end of the film we realize we could’ve followed any other initial situation and reach the same conclusion. The camera is always looking for a subject and it doesn’t stop until it finally finds it. In this case, the white balloon that closes the film. The story of the girl that yearns for a gold fish is nothing but an excuse of the narrative to get somewhere else.”

Jafar Panahi is very likely one of the most prominent Iranian filmmaker alive. His first full length feature film, The White Balloon (1995), written by the renowned Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, had its first round of critical acclaim when it earned the Golden Camera Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Engaging and compelling, The White Balloon has the characteristic stately tone of the best Iranian productions, hand in hand with Panahi’s narrative delicacy, that of a director who masters the art of depicting the everyday. Take the periplus of the little girl in search of her goldfish, orchestrated around a series of obstacles that mark the girl’s first venture into the adult world on her own. Panahi’s second outing, The Mirror (1997), winner of the Golden Leopard at the 1997 Locarno Film Festival, also features a little girl, but this time she is the actress of a film within the film. This is unveiled halfway through the story through a deliberately brisk narrative change marked by the appearance of the film crew.

His third film, The Circle (2000), winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, is his most elaborate work, a wondrous film of an astonishing aesthetic ripeness. The anecdote comes from an episode that Teheran’s newspapers reduced to a couple of lines: the suicide of a woman after having report murdering her two young daughters. But what struck the director the most was that the press did not inform the motives of the murders and the suicide, hence taking for granted that it wasn’t relevant – after all, it concerned women living in a patriarchal society. From an enraged viewpoint that gives the film its relentless tone, The Circle narrates the erratic stories of three women of different ages after their evasion from prison for petty offenses. It doesn’t matter what their “crimes” were, or whether the women are guilty or innocent.

Instead, Panahi’s acute gaze is focused on the endless movements of these three women trapped inside a vicious circle of poverty, desperation, and fierce discrimination. The director chooses to tell these stories by linking one to the next, as if it all were a circle. Just like the long takes convey the oppressive real time inhabited by these characters, the camera follows the women, running and hiding. Thus, it enhances the feeling of fleeing towards nowhere in a present continuous where the departure point is identical to the arrival.

His fourth film, Crimson Gold (2003), winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and also written by Abbas Kiarostami, shows the growing chasm in Iran between rich and poor and the psychological effects of living under a regime based on fundamentalist religion. It’s based on a newspaper article about an incident that took place several years ago in Tehran. The film opens inside a jewelry store where a robbery is taking place. As a crowd gathers outside, the robber is trapped when the security system and bars goes off the front door. Flashbacks then show the events that led up to the crime, and viewers speculate on what might have led to this act of desperation.

Panahi’s fifth film, Offside (2006), winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, spins the yarn of several young Iranian women who cross dress to get into a World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain. When they’re caught, they’re penned in an area where the match remains within earshot, but out of sight. The prisoners plead to be let go, but rules are rules. However, the girls will do everything in their power to get to watch the game, come what may.

In Panahi’s films, the edgy places where his characters often are as relevant as the character themselves. Asked about how he chose the locations for his films, Panahi replied: “Once I have the characters, I start looking for the locations. Or it could also be the other way around: I have a well-defined idea, but when I go to the locations I don’t feel they are truly useful. I know a location is the right one when I feel its essence, I get carried away and thus I can capture what emanates from the location. Locations are as important as the characters because they give the inspiration as to what to do with them. For instance, the notion of circularity is present in all my locations. I believe everything is circular and that all our movements are circular.”