No Bears (2022): Still, The Path May Not Be Safe

No Bears is the latest film from one of Iran’s leading filmmakers, Jafar Panahi. It is arguably also his best. Long-time readers of my reviews know that I am a huge fan. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Ayatollahs who rule his homeland or the Revolutionary Guards who do their bidding.  

A little history is in order. In 2010, Panahi was arrested and convicted of shooting a documentary critical of the regime: “Colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic”.  Sentenced to six years in prison, he served a few months, but was eventually released under house arrest. Perhaps even more onerously his sentence included a twenty-year ban on his making or directing movies, writing screenplays, giving interviews, or leaving the country.

Panahi is internationally esteemed both for his filmmaking and his courage in standing up to oppression. Prior to his 2010 arrest, Panahi had made five feature films, all of which, after his first, were banned in Iran before their release. His first - The White Balloon - was widely praised and won the 1995 Prix de la Camera d’Or prize at Cannes (awarded for best first feature). His next film, The Mirror, won the Golden Leopard prize (best film) at the 1997 Locarno International Film Festival. His third feature, The Circle, won the top prize (Golden Lion) at the Venice International Film Festival in 2000. His fifth, Offside, received the Silver Bear at the Berlinale Festival, the second most prestigious award. [Why all these festivals honor animals is a mystery.]

In 2012, the European Parliament awarded Panahi its Sakharov Prize – since 1988 an annual honorary award bestowed to a person or group who have dedicated their lives to the defense of human rights and freedom of thought. Other recipients have included Nelson Mandela, Alexander Dupcek, Kofi Annan,  Hu Jia, Malala Yousafzai, and Alexei Navalny. 

In defiance of the restrictions opposed on him by his government, Panahi has continued to make movies. I wrote about the first of these, entitled This Is Not A Film, which was smuggled out of Iran and released in 2011. Here is my REVIEW. A few years later came Taxi Teheran, aka Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (2015), which you can read about here in my 2016 REVIEW.  Both of those pictures were creative, thinly disguised attempts to circumvent the legal proscriptions he was operating under. In each, he played himself. Both were warmly received in the West, with Taxi winning the top honor at the Berlinale this time (Golden Bear) – and, of course, banned in Iran.

In July 2022, after finishing No Bears, but prior to its release, Panahi was arrested again, charged with “anti-regime propaganda” and again sentenced to six years in prison. In early February 2023, after going on a hunger strike, he was released. 

But what about the movie itself?  

In a word, terrific. No Bears opens with a scene in a small, cobblestone street in an unnamed city, with a long-time couple – Zara (Mina Kavani) and Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei) - discussing a fake passport to finally leave the country. There’s just the one for her right now, Bakhtiar says; his will take longer, but he’ll follow her.  Zara won’t accept that. She has stayed and waited these last ten years only for him, she says angrily. She turns heel and leaves in a huff. “Cut”, says an off-camera voice. 

It turns out this is, quite literally, a scene being filmed for a movie. No Bears is a great example of reflexive cinema: it’s about of the making of a movie, and also about the director making the movie. The film within the film concerns a disaffected, undocumented Iranian couple – Zara and Bakhtiar – who have fled Iran and are stuck in this small Turkish city seeking black market documents that will allow them to emigrate to Europe. Imagine all the people stuck in Casablanca (1942), having fled wartime Europe, desperately trying to get exit visas, and you’ll have some idea just how fraught their situation must be.

The director is played by Jafar Panahi and called Jafar Panahi. To avoid confusion, I’ll call the character “JP”. The movie JP is working on is being shot in Turkey. He is not at the shoot but instead staying in a small, rustic, seemingly ancient village across the border in Iran, not far away as the crow flies, but otherwise in another universe. From his simple room, JP is attempting to supervise the production remotely via his laptop – when the sporadic internet reception is available. 

The villagers know he is some kind of celebrity and by their standards pretty wealthy. They address him respectfully as “maestro” or “sir”.  They don’t know exactly what he is doing in their remote town, which makes them curious, but also somewhat suspicious. Why choose to stay HERE, so remote and so close to the border? 

JP’s precise legal status is not spelled out in No Bears, but there is some allusion to the fact that JP is forbidden to cross the border, so it seems pretty similar to Panahi’s real life situation – not allowed to make movies or leave Iran. On a meta level, No Bears is a reflection of the real-life director’s situation, with the line between JP and Panahi himself left intentionally fuzzy. 

In his spare time, like when there is no internet, JP is exposed to and fascinated by the lives of the people in the village, their traditions and their rituals – so different from his more cosmopolitan world in Teheran. His host, Ghanbar, is a ditchdigger. Ghanbar’s mother cooks JP’s meals over a wood-fired pit. Eventually, JP gets drawn into an emotional family conflict involving star-crossed lovers. A village elder visits him and explains: “We have a tradition in this village. When a girl is born, the umbilical cord is cut in the name of her future husband.  When Gozal was born, that was done in the name of Yaghoob. Now that they are old enough, they’re supposed to get married.  However …”.  There is another young man, Soldooz, who is in love with Gozal and, flouting tradition, the two of them are secretly romancing. Yaghoob and his family believe that JP, while photographing some town folk, took a picture of the illicit lovers together, and they demand that JP turn this “evidence” over to them. JP says they are mistaken, but it’s not that simple.

Panahi is a humanitarian filmmaker, and all these people – the fictional lovers Zara and Bakhtiar  (whose movie is intended to reflect their real-life situation), as well as the many characters in JP's remote village, from Ghanbar to the Sheriff, to the young people Soldooz, Gozal and Yaghoob – are portrayed compassionately and credibly – so real, in fact, that it’s almost as if we were watching a documentary.  This effect is enhanced by the intimate style of the photography (by Amin Jafari) and the unaffected acting by the largely non-professional cast.

Within the framework of these stories No Bears manages to explore a number of intriguing, provocative themes and quandaries. Chief among these, of course, is the contrast between our liberal notions of liberty and tolerance (allowing people wide latitude to make choices about their lives and act accordingly) and the  constraint on such freedoms by an authoritarian political system or a conservative community’s rigid enforcement of customs and prejudices – as illustrated by the quandary of Zara and Bakhtiar in the movie-within-a-movie, or the dilemma faced by young lovers Gozal and Soldooz, whose families and community forbid their relationship.  For his vehement, angry objection to the Gozal-Soldooz romance, Yaghjoob would be the villain of this segment of the picture, until we realize that he, too, is trapped by village tradition: his ”right” to marry Gozal has meant that no other girl in the village will accept him. Oppression and intolerance play no favorites; everyone becomes a victim. 

The analogies to JP’s situation and to Panahi himself are plain to see. Forbidden to pursue his career, his art, his passion – and also forbidden to leave the country. It's not at all clear however that, if given the choice, Panahi would leave Iran. If he wanted to emigrate, you'd think he might have found a way to do this by now. The village in No Bears, being so near the Turkish border, is close to well-travelled - and  dangerous - smuggling routes. One of JP's assistants takes him out there one night to a spot where he can see the lights of the Turkish city where the movie shoot is taking place. When JP realizes he is standing just about on the actual border, he recoils. He does not want to cross over – seemingly more out of principle than from fear. 

The intertwined stories in the film do not have simple or necessarily happy endings. Life is not like that. By the time the picture ends, you may be left with more than a few unanswered questions. For example, what role did JPs filmmaking have in the fates of his actors, Zara and Bakhtiar? In the village drama, was JP being honest when he denied taking the sought-after photo showing Gozal and Soldooz together? Does he bear any responsibility for the outcome of their relationship?  Did Panahi, secretly filming No Bears in a remote Iranian village, put the lives or livelihoods of the people there – in addition to his own - in danger?  What is the responsibility of the artist to those whose lives he touches?

No Bears is a great film on a lot of levels. The drama and intrigue start slowly, then cumulate and intertwine like a fine thriller. Everything in this picture rings true – so much so that the boundary between artifice and reality dissolves and we question where reality ends and fiction begins – and vice versa. We get to see a world very different from our own and learn something about the lives and concerns of the people inhabiting that world; people with whom, through Panahi’s artistry, we feel some empathy.  Their stories have a kind of universality, not because we’ll ever be in the situations depicted in the narrative, but because their reactions to these situations feel so true, so human. It’s a film you may well keep thinking about days after watching it – always a good sign.

1 hour 46 minutes 

Grade: A

Available to rent from many streaming platforms, including Amazon, AppleTV and Vudu.