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Despite widely supported campaigns from Amnesty International and Cine Foundational International to protest the sentence, Panahi lost his appeal to reduce his prison sentence and shorten the duration of the ban.Panahi shot This Is Not A Film in his Tehran apartment, while he was under house arrest. Although he could be put back in jail at any time, he defies his sentence by making This Is Not A Film, using digital cameras, including an iPhone, to document his daily life. We see him eating breakfast, talking to his lawyer and his wife on the phone, and taking care of the family's pet iguana. And, remarking that he is not breaking the law and his personal restrictions by reading his film, he asks his colleague, filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, to record him as he reads the screenplay, describing what the action would be.The film was shot clandestinely and smuggled out of Iran to the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Panahi was not allowed to leave Iran to attend either festival.This unusual not-a-film is fascinating, and very moving. Not much heavy drama happens during the film, but Panahi is a very strong character and he invites us to observe his dilemma in a very intimate way. Not much happens during the not-a-film, which was shot clandestinely and smuggled out of Iran. Watch This is Not a Film Movie Online


In This Is Not A Film, there is no direct discussion of the history leading up to Panahi's current situation, nor is there any statement about the political situation in Iran. There is no apparent agenda to gain support for a repeal and easing Panahi's uncertainty about his future. Nor are there any direct complaints expressed against the authorities who placed Panahi under arrest and banned his creative expressions. Yet, knowing the background story, you fully understand the underlying anguish and anxiety Panahi is feeling -- and, by extension, are provoked to consider the experiences of others living in Iran and other countries with repressive regimes are experiencing.Panahi is brilliant. His not-a-film is a must-not-be-missed.Here comes the first line, the kick-off, the opening siren, the bit to lure the reader in, the string of letters, syllables 'n' words to get the 'em interested, get 'em involved, get 'em to take a nibble and hopefully they'll want to digest the rest. There might be a splash of colour, a sparkling adjective or two, or maybe something stripped down, more congruent, more logical -- something to contextualise the film being reviewed, to pigeon-hole and genre-ify it, give it an umbrella definition.

Maybe the opening will contain a pithy evaluation, something opinionated, a from-the-get-go indication of the reviewer's thoughts, where they might tread, how the resulting words will be framed. Maybe it'll follow the old school inverted pyramid journalist structure, the top more pertinent than anything below it, an upside-down funnel of relevance, or maybe it'll be something wildly different, something to flaunt the rules. Who knows? You won't find out here. This is not a review.But at least I have the freedom to write one, and access to a (relatively) open media is a freedom easy to forget.This is Not a Film is the unofficial sixth feature from Iranian director and social critic Jafar Panahi, and its paradoxical title -- this, of course, is a film, though certainly no ordinary one -- vaguely and indirectly hints at the predicament the director found himself in. At least, what he found happened when he pushed his luck too far, when he was handed down orders what not to make.Panahi is a political activist who was nabbed by the state in 2009 for unspecified crimes and has been banned from making films for the next two decades. He also faces six years in prison.

If I had to pigeon hole this unusual work, deliver one of 'em pithy evaluations, it would be 'doco' but the reader, unless they've previously gorged too heavily on other words, will probably want more. In which case This is Not a Film is a post modernist doublethink documentary. A documentary that draws attention to not making a film while making one. Such a premise is more compelling on an intellectual level than moment-by-moment, so we discover, but no more on that. This is not a review.This is Not a Film, co-directed by Panahi's friend Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, was smuggled out of Iran on a USB stick stuffed inside a cake. However, this is not a fire and brimstone political protest, the kind you'd expect to be smuggled out in such a way, one that would have the fuzz and top brass pounding their iron fists on tables with fury.In fact it's utterly prosaic and shot almost entirely in Panahi's apartment. He is not allowed to create a set to make his next film -- or hire any actors, of course -- so he reads scenes from a script after he puts tape on the floor to mark the boundaries of his makeshift set, like the chalk outlines on the sound stage in Lars von Trier's Dogville and Manderlay. But there won't be any more comparisons here, not in this piece. This is not a review.

In a memorable scene Panahi recounts the story of an actor he previously directed, a young little girl unaccustomed to the movie biz. She was playing a character on the bus on her way home, and then the gal cracked it -- demanded to be let off, kept sayin', repeatedly, she wanted out. Why? She knew she was participating in a lie, Panahi later reasoned. Her home was not located in the direction she was travelling.When I wrote about Casey Affleck and Joaquin Poenix's real-or-not-umentary I'm Still Here I argued that Jean-Luc Godard's maxim "cinema is truth 24 frames a second" got it the wrong way around. A good movie is a well-manufactured lie. A series of illusions, small and large, strung together.Panahi explains that he does not want to make a lie; he does not want to make a "film." Thus the title. An extended interview with the building's janitor suggests some lightness of material; then again, the happy, busy cleaner is like a small, vivid supporting role in a feature, and it's worth it just for the closing image, which is quite something. But no atmospheric analysis here. This is not a review. Watch This is Not a Film Movie Online

This Is Not a Film signifies how any formal critical recommendation system (i.e. star ratings) breaks down, crumbles into irrelevancy if taken at face value, at least for the punters. Most audiences are likely to find much of it dull to watch, but conceptually it's so interesting critics are likely to see something of obvious, tantalising value, something that well surpasses a flimsy, balsa wood experimentation in anti-filmmaking.Here comes the last sentence, the closing siren, the string of letters, syllables 'n' words for the writer to find or try to find a satisfying resolution. Maybe it will be a scissor snip, something abrupt and pointy to finish on, or maybe it will be another contextualisation, something to reinforce where the film fits on the cultural horizon. Maybe it will be a joke, or something clever, or maybe simply a tie-in to the start of the review -- a "call-back" in stand-up comedian parlance -- the second bookend, the bit where an incomplete loop becomes a circle.