‘Jafar Panahi’

In 2010, the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison, along with a twenty year ban on making films. Accused of “propaganda against the regime”, he was then placed under house arrest and was not allowed to leave the country, nor give interviews to the press. Every morning he fears the Pasdaran (the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution) will come by to inform him of his immediate imprisonment. He can no longer pursue his passion for filmmaking, which was his whole raison d’être. Panahi could have either stopped filming, changed activity, or chosen exile. But he decided to defy the ban by continuing to make films, whatever the price – This not a film (2011), Closed Curtain (2013), Taxi (2015) – and by accepting the Pompidou Centre’s invitation to make the short film, Où en êtes-vous, Jafar Panahi?. In all of his films, he questions, gets to grips with and goes beyond this loss of freedom. Faced with a “forbidden” cinema, he responds with an “insubordinate” cinema. When he is not making clandestine films or dreaming about the ones he can’t make, Panahi indulges in photography. Since 2013, his main focus has been on clouds. He is interested in clouds because they are the very prototype of what is concealed. What better projection surface than the sky? There he can explore his most burning desires. Delicate, nomadic and completely unhindered, in his eyes clouds represent the ultimate expression of freedom.