No Bears

Jafar Panahi, the indefatigable filmmaker, never loses his vigor and continues his guerrilla warfare against the Iranian regime. Navigating the familiar borderlands between fiction and documentary, he spares no one, not even his own environment or himself. In No Bears, Panahi reveals how, from the perspective of the Iranian provinces, isolated from his crew and communicating with them solely through the internet (as the director is still formally banned from making films), he oversees the production of a new project. Panahi tries to put on a brave face and endure discomfort, believing that by staying away from Tehran, he can seek refuge from the watchful eye of authority. However, the artist's wishful thinking succumbs to the harsh realities, and the atmosphere surrounding his politically engaged melodrama grows increasingly tense. The titular bears serve as the immediate source of tension, but it is the ideological disputes, in which Panahi himself becomes entangled, that prove far more dangerous. The intensity of these experiences significantly impacts the director, who poses the question of whether fiction can still help us come to terms with an increasingly terrifying reality.