The 79th Mostra competition ends with a snub to censorship: recently imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi presented his new film on Friday, September 9, a mise en abyme of his own situation to better denounce oppression.
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The award-winning artist in the biggest festivals, prevented by his incarceration from coming to defend his film
Les ours n'existe pas
, in the running for the Golden Lion, is omnipresent on the screen in a game of mirrors reflecting the complexity of his situation: that of a creator locked up in his own country.
Read alsoDissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi arrested in Iran
The screening reserved for the press was greeted with a round of applause, intended as much for the film, which intersects with several plots, as for the 62-year-old filmmaker, putting himself on stage in his own role, continuing his work despite the pitfalls and the temptation to flee a country where he is harassed.
The film shows him directing from a village in Iran actors, refugees in Turkey on the other side of the border, via a videoconference application.
Imprisoned in July after a conviction for
“propaganda against the regime”
, Jafar Panahi sent a letter to the festival last week, co-signed with his colleague Mohammad Rasoulof, also detained, in which they accuse Tehran of considering independent filmmakers
“like criminals »
.
Read alsoVenice Film Festival: Tehran "sees us as criminals", denounces filmmaker Jafar Panahi
“The history of Iranian cinema bears witness to the constant and active presence of independent directors who fought against censorship to guarantee the survival of this art. Among these, some are banned from making films, others have been forced into exile or reduced to solitary confinement”
, they denounced in their missive.
"We are scared"
Their compatriot Vahid Jalilvand, author of the second Iranian film in competition at the Mostra and present on the Lido, expressed his support to them.
“No artist or intellectual should be in prison, whether in Iran or elsewhere in the world
,” he declared Thursday, September 8 to AFP.
While the Iranian power and Jafar Panahi had been playing a subtle game of cat and mouse for years which allowed the filmmaker to continue filming, the situation took a more dramatic turn with his imprisonment.
In a column titled
“Free Jafar!”
, published Friday, September 9, the director of the Mostra, Alberto Barbera, is worried about his fate fearing
"a harsh punishment
"
. "The regime has always opposed him in an aggressive way and we are all afraid of what will happen to him."
Jafar Panahi, who began his career as an assistant to Abbas Kiarostami, won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2000 for
Le Cercle
and the Screenplay Prize at Cannes in 2018 with
Three Faces
, three years after the Ours d' Gold in Berlin for
Taxi Tehran
.
Two other films in competition were presented to festival-goers on Friday:
Les Miens
by Roschdy Zem, the most personal of the six films signed by the French director and actor of 56, as well as
Chiara
, a fresco by Italian Susanna Nicchiarelli on the life of Saint Clare. , the traveling companion of Saint Francis of Assisi whom history has often relegated to the shadows.
The race for the prestigious Golden Lion remains very open between the 23 films in the running, with no favorite clearly emerging from the lot to succeed
L'Event
, a punchy film on abortion, awarded last year.