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In 2011, Iranian director Jafar Panahi received a six year prison sentence and a 20 year ban on filmmaking, for 'making propaganda against the system.'
How can you make a film when your government has banned you? This clandestine documentary is Panahi’s brilliant and brave answer.
Shot partially on an iPhone and smuggled into France in a cake for a last-minute submission to Cannes, This Is Not A Film depicts Panahi’s day-to-day life while under house arrest in his Tehran apartment. While appealing his sentence, we see him talking to his family and lawyer on the phone, discussing his plight with co-director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, and reflecting on the meaning and art of filmmaking. What emerges from this intimate self-portrait is a by turns humorous, moving, and defiant statement of creative resilience in the face of oppression.