Sunday, 11.6.2023, 7:15 p.m.
Feature film
IR 2022, 107 min
Director: Jafar Panahi
With: Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Mina Kavani, Bulent Keser, Sinan Yusufoglu
Turkic-language Azeri and Farsi with English subtitles.
A filmmaker – Panahi himself – wants to secretly coordinate a film shoot in Turkey from a Turkish-Iranian border village, despite government repression. At the same time, he is confronted with absurd accusations from the Azeri-speaking villagers: He is said to have photographed a pair of lovers.
In fourteen years of illegal shooting, Panahi has found new mastery. “No Bears” is a “parable about the oppressive stagnation of a society and the panic-stricken rejection of change: in the city under the pressure of authorities, in the village in the bias of superstition. How do you make art to make society change when it doesn’t want to?”
