This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb) [77 points / 7 votes]
"Jafar Panahi’s “not film,” recorded from the confines of his apartment building during his widely publicized house-arrest, then courageously smuggled out of Iran on a thumb-drive hidden inside of a cake, is a simultaneously maddening and liberating viewing experience. Maddening for the obvious reasons: one of the world’s great auteurs has been banned from writing and directing for decades at the mandate of an unjust, totalitarian Iranian government. A sequence in which Panhi acts out scenes from a movie he aspired to make before the ban, standing within a crudely taped blueprint of the set on his living room floor, is painstaking. But it’s liberating to know that, even when oppressed by the tyrannical legal system of his homeland, Panahi cannot be kept from his art. This is Not a Film is as vital as anything Panahi has ever made, with a closing shot for the ages." - Danny Baldwin
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