3 Faces
Jafar Panahi is eight years into his filmmaking ban by the Iranian government. This latest film, which won the Best Screenplay Award in Cannes 2018, is another mischievous and perceptive story about the contradiction within contemporary Iranian society.
After receiving an apparent suicide note from a girl whose family oppose her decision to study drama, actress Behnaz Jafari (playing herself) and Panahi travel by car to the rural, Azeri-speaking Northwest of Iran, to seek her out and to discover the truth of the matter.
Audacious in its simplicity of style, 3 Faces is an oblique contemplation of the patriarchal customs that impact women in all areas of Iranian society. Quietly effective and moving, Panahi’s generosity of spirit prevails throughout.
Awards
- Winner, Best Screenplay, Jafar Panahi & Nader Saeivar, Cannes Film Festival 2018
‘Jafar Panahi has here created a quietly engaging quasi-realist parable, part of his ongoing and unique creative cine-autobiography, full of intelligence and humility and a real respect for women and female actors. It is gentle, elusive, and redolent of this director’s mysterious Iranian zen’
The Guardian
‘… turning a deeply respectful, artful and compassionate eye outward, to the struggles of others, … Panahi is determined to sing someone else’s song, and in times like these, such generosity of spirit is its own quietly fierce act of cinematic defiance.’
Variety