No Bears

Jafar Panahi plays a version of himself who, barred from leaving Iran, rents a room in the village of Jaban near the Turkish border and remotely directs a film being shot across the border, over an unreliable internet connection. The film within the film follows Zara and Bakhtiar, a couple trying to obtain false passports to reach Europe. In the village, Panahi is accused of having photographed a young woman with a man other than her betrothed, and the dispute grows into a confrontation with grave consequences. Panahi was arrested in July 2022 and began serving a six-year prison sentence, so the film premiered at the 79th Venice Film Festival in his absence and won the Special Jury Prize.