In 2010, Iranian director Jafar Panahi was prohibited by his government from making films. Despite the ban, Panahi was able to make five films. Last July, Panahi was jailed for six years. Even he has been unable to make films while incarcerated. Prior to his imprisonment, Panahi made No Bears, a film that, among other things, deals with difficulties of filming when a director must operate surreptitiously. In No Bears, which sometimes resembles a documentary, Panahi (This is Not A Film, Taxi) plays a director who has moved to a village away from Teheran. He uses his laptop and phone to stay in touch with a crew that's filming a story about two people who are trying to leave the country. In the film-within-a-film, Zara (Mina Kavani) and Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei) aren't in agreement. She has obtained a fake passport; he has not. She refuses to leave without him. For his part, Panahi runs into trouble with the townspeople of Jabbar, a small village near the Turkish border. Panahi's solicitous landlord (Vahid Mobaseri) apprises him of problems he may have with the locals who are upset about a supposedly compromising photograph they believe he has has taken. Both narrative streams of Panahi's film lead to tragic results. Employing a no-frills style, Panahi has made a complex, thought-provoking film that raises questions about a filmmaker’s responsibilities and makes you wonder about a society that would put such a gifted artist in jail.*
Saint Omer
First off, it's necessary to know that Saint-Omer is a small town in France that was home to a trial that gripped the French imagination. A French woman of Senegalese descent confessed to the murder of her toddler. She left her child sleeping on a beach so that death would follow when the tide rolled in. The woman claimed the devil -- or more accurately -- demons made her do it. That crime becomes the basis for director Alice Diop's Saint Omer, a meticulous depiction of the the mother’s trail as seen through the eyes of Rama (Kayije Kagame), a Senegalese-French writer and professor. Rama, who's pregnant, convinces her publisher that she should write about the trial. She sees a connection between the defendant and Medea. Much of the movie involves the testimony of Laurence (Guslagie Malanda), the self-confessed murderer. An aspiring student of philosophy, Laurence cuts a peculiar figure; she says she hopes the trial will provide an explanation for what she did. Rama's fascination with Laurence gives the movie the provocative charge of a writer trying to tackle a disturbing but irresistible subject. No, Rama decides this isn't some modern version of Medea. Diop allows the racism that Laurence faces to emerge as the trial unfolds. The resultant movie peers into both Senegalese and French cultures, focusing on issues of race, motherhood and alienation. But Diop doesn't stop there: She confronts us with the inexplicable side of human behavior which she explores in lengthy, immobile shots that resist the sensationalism a subject such as this might have elicited. Perhaps Diop wanted to move slowly so that we could ponder how ill-equipped we are to deal with secrets the heart insists on keeping — even from the person in which it beats.
*On Feb. 3 news broke that Panahi was released from prison. Panama's release came two days after he had begun a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. Let's hope that Panahi remains free.
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