Since 2010, the Iranian Director is permitted to rotate no more movies, but still. His latest strip is about the privation of life in the country, where the reality is, especially for women.
Marziyeh Rezaei dreams of a career as an actress
It much the car is driven in “Three faces” (original title: “Se Rokh”). You know brought it out of the movie “Taxi to Tehran”, Jafar Panahi, 2015 the Golden bear at the Berlinale. Also this time the Director is sitting at the wheel – at his side the well-known actress Behnaz Jafari, who is also in real life. The two follow a call for help from the Iranian province: A young girl, Marziyeh Rezaei, had complained Jafari before in a video message she was sorry, that she wanted to actually study at the Conservatory of dramatic art, and even a commitment. But her parents were against it, they wanted to advise you prefer to marry – it is the purpose according to the old Tradition for a woman.
Marziyeh is desperate, because the actress has not yet responded to your messages. In this case, the girl was hoping on your help, because, after all, has managed Behnaz Jafari, despite all the Patriarchal structures but also to gain a foothold in the film business. In Tehran, namely women enjoy at least some freedoms, otherwise than in the country. In the last setting of your video message to Marziyeh puts a rope around your neck and jump into the Unknown.
A monument to the female art of acting
Now, Behnaz Jafari and Jafar Panahi are on the way to a village in the border region to Azerbaijan, to find out if the young girl has killed herself really. It has not, as it later turns out, but with her disturbing Video has managed to attract Behnaz Jafari to the village.
Want to know what happened with Marziyeh: Behnaz Jafari and Jafar Panahi
The third face appears that is the essence of this Film is crucial: It is the Shahrzad, of Panahi dramaturgically always sent set to you only as a Silhouette in the scene. Before the Revolution she was a famous actress, known until today in Iran. At the end of the 1970s it has imposed a prohibition from practising a profession; now, the once-acclaimed Diva lives on the sites of their former glory, far away, lonely and ostracized.
Panahi, it quickly becomes clear, has dedicated his Film to all the women who have dedicated themselves to the art of acting. In Iran, they are despised, reviled, and disparagingly as fallen women. However, in “Three faces” rebel three female generations, just as Panahi himself, the presents, after all, already his fourth movie, since he was eight years of professional ban.
Minimalist Rotary
And so the Director had to, like so many times before, also in “Three faces,” with a minimalist means living. Only a wizard, and a highly sensitive and flexible camera, he had during the filming. For complicated settings, this is not enough, not even for elaborate against cuts. Panahi captures, therefore, above all, its protagonists for the canvas. He remains throughout the narrative, mostly in the Background. Rotated in three villages in the North of Iran, where once his parents and grandparents lived and where never someone to miss the Regime in Tehran about Panahi’s respect for his prohibition would inform.
The well-known actress Jafari is patterned by the villagers suspicious
In the case of all the more or less hidden criticism of the political situation in his homeland and the traditional settings of the villagers Panahi but also a colorful and humorous Potpourri of the province of is full of but funny situations and customs. So you hand him the salt pickled foreskin of a little boy, he is buried in Tehran is in a powerful place so that the child later on to something.
And then there’s a road that winds around a mountain, but only by a car. Who is allowed to first pass will be decided by means of a complicated Hup-Ritual. As Marziyeh, who pretended at first for her suicide, with pick and shovel to go out to the street to widen, is the village community. This is no job for a girl. Finally, a breeding bull to a standstill traffic on the way wide.
For Iranian women, equality, anything other than, of course,
One may understand this as an allusion to the Regime or not, Panahi anyway, the audience at this year’s film enchanted festival of Cannes with such stories. The Iranian Director would like to come to the world premiere in Cannes, but the Iranian government has him connected not only with professional but also with a travel ban. Since the Intervention of the French not helped. So his place at the world premiere remained in the cinema hall empty, frenetic applause it was him or just because certainly. Because, again, he has managed to turn secretly a movie and smuggle out of the country.
And in times of #MeToo Panahi has also presented a feminist Manifesto comes on quiet soles. Because, he complains, but shows solidarity with the women, to condemn without the men. For the first time, several names are in the credits of the film. In other countries, is common in Iran, this is a bold gesture. Because it is committed to working with a Director who is already fallen long out of favor. It is a Protest, the power of hope for better times.