TIFF: No Bears (2022)
When
Approximate running time: 1 hour and 46 minutes
Venue
Event Notes
TIFF: No Bears (2022)
Tuesday, December 12, 2023 at 7:00pm
Tickets: $12.50
Rating: unrated / Country: Iran / Languages: Persian, Azerbaijani, Turkish
Description: No Bears, follows two parallel love stories in which the partners are thwarted by hidden, inevitable obstacles, the force of superstition, and the mechanics of power. Prohibited by the government from making films and from leaving Iran, owing to his politically critical movies, filmmaker Jafar Panahi — playing a fictionalized version of himself — has rented a room at the village of Jaban, near Turkey's border, where he is remotely directing a docudrama about an Iranian couple, Bakhtiar and Zara, who are attempting to secure fake passports so they can flee the country after years of government abuse. No Bears premiered at the 79th Venice Film Festival in competition for the Golden Lion, without the presence of the director, who has been arrested and sentenced to 6 years prison in Iran, prior to the film's release. It won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in September 2022.