J
Jafar Panahi, the iranian filmmaker is banned from filming by the authorities of his country, who see him as a political opponent of the first order. Feminist, activist, human rights, Panahi has defied the ban, since his conviction in 2010, seeking all forms of expression possible to express resistance to oppression.
In Tehran, the taxi becomes a means of transport common when multiple clients are piling up on the drive a random vehicle. Tongues loosen, then, in what seems to be one of the last spaces for freedom of expression in this country padlocked. This is after having lived for several meetings in taxis that Jafar Panahi had the idea to improvise a driver and direct the film, which is based on the conversations of the customers.
The iranian director provides with TAXI TEHERAN a was chinese of an oppressed people. The film is based intelligently on the breaths of the cultural, vital, that look Téhéranais. Through street sellers, DVDS and CDS that are pirated, and of course in every scene, we taste the desire of freedom of the iranians, to get out of the doldrums of the environment.
The arrangements put in place by Panahi, three-camera light fixed in the interior, hidden from customers, picks up the conversations. Small talk, played by professional and amateur actors ; debates or stories that immerse us in the climate chilling of the dictatorship of islam. The smaller plans are sequences follow one another without connection, while the driver approximate Jafar Panahi takes women, fish, red or bubbly niece to destinations sometimes improbable. Thanks to the system, which is similar to the video art, the truth of these people broke out, although the boundary between fiction and documentary is permanently thin and wavering. The director varies the media (go pro, mobile phone, video camera) and immerses us in a jumble of images modern and realistic, which we include in the film. Our curiosity is stirred by the frame reduced image, the scenery and the few changes of the axes of the small camera, providing a view of Tehran fragmented. The few notes of music emanating from the car radio, and the direct sound, we immerse themselves in the teeming capital, finally, little known, and in its traffic chaotic.
“The humour with the lyrics and the stories more violent.”
Panahi is an actor, director, chief operator of images and of sound and book film scoring, both by his words and by its shape. The first release of the film takes place in France. Although it received the Golden Bear at the last Berlin film Festival, its director may not leave the country. TAXI TEHERAN is a militant act, an appeal to the freedom of expression and culture. The humor with the lyrics and the stories more violent. It remains a knock out, aghast by what happens to the iranians in everyday life. As a postcard by a desperate TAXI TEHERAN denouncing the suffocating atmosphere of the society in which the resistance can be fatal.
@carnetscritique
The other outputs of the April 15, 2015
TAXI TO TEHRAN, EN ROUTE!, ROBIN hood, IN EQUILIBRIUM, A NICE ENDING, GORILLAS, CHILD 44, etc
• Production : Jafar Panahi
• Screenplay : Jafar Panahi
• Main actors : Jafar Panahi
• Country of origin : Iran
• Released : April 15, 2015
• Duration :1h22min
• Distributor : Memento Films Ditribution
• Synopsis : in Tehran, at the wheel of a taxi, Jafar Panahi films the conversations of the customers.