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The 79th Mostra competitors ends with a snub to censorship: lately imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi introduced his newest opus on Friday, a mise en abyme of his personal state of affairs to raised denounce oppression.

The award-winning artist within the largest festivals, prevented by his incarceration from coming to defend his movie “The Bears Do Not Exist”, within the operating for the Golden Lion, is omnipresent on the display screen in a sport of mirrors reflecting the complexity of his state of affairs: that of a creator locked up in his personal nation.

The screening reserved for the press was greeted with a spherical of applause, supposed as a lot for the movie, which intersects with a number of plots, as for the 62-year-old filmmaker, placing himself on stage in his personal function, persevering with his work regardless of the pitfalls and the temptation to flee a rustic the place he’s harassed.

The movie reveals him directing from a village in Iran actors, refugees in Turkey on the opposite facet of the border, by way of a videoconference software.

“We’re scared”

Jailed in July after a conviction for “propaganda in opposition to the regime”, Panahi despatched the pageant a letter co-signed together with his colleague Mohammad Rasoulof, additionally detained, final week by which they accused Tehran of contemplating unbiased filmmakers “as criminals”. .

“The historical past of Iranian cinema testifies to the fixed and lively presence of unbiased administrators who’ve fought in opposition to censorship and to ensure the survival of this artwork. Amongst these, some are banned from making movies, others have been pressured into exile or lowered to solitary confinement”, they denounced of their missive.

Their compatriot Vahid Jalilvand, creator of the second Iranian movie in competitors on the Mostra and current on the Lido, expressed his assist to them. “No artist or mental ought to be in jail, whether or not in Iran or wherever else on the planet,” he informed AFP on Thursday.

Whereas the Iranian energy and Panahi had been taking part in a refined sport of cat and mouse for years, which allowed the filmmaker to proceed filming, the state of affairs took a extra dramatic flip together with his incarceration.

Demonstration of assist

In a column entitled “Free Jafar!”, printed on Friday, the director of the Mostra, Alberto Barbera, worries about his destiny and fears “a harsh punishment”: “the regime has at all times opposed him in an aggressive and we’re all afraid of what is going to occur to him”.

One other demonstration of assist was held on the purple carpet of the cinema palace simply earlier than the official screening of the movie within the afternoon: a flash mob introduced collectively round 100 individuals, within the first row of whom Alberto Barbera, the president of the jury Julianne Moore or the French director Audrey Diwan, winner of the Golden Lion final 12 months and juror this 12 months.

The contributors held up placards demanding the discharge of filmmakers detained all over the world, together with in fact Iranian administrators, but additionally Burmese producer Ma Aeint and Turkish journalist and producer Cigdem Mater.

23 movies and license

Jafar Panahi, who started his profession as an assistant to Abbas Kiarostami, gained the Golden Lion at Venice in 2000 for “The Circle” and the Screenplay Prize at Cannes in 2018 with “Three Faces”, three years after the ‘Golden Bear in Berlin for “Taxi Tehran”.

Two different movies in competitors had been introduced to festival-goers on Friday: “Les Miens” by Roschdy Zem, probably the most private of the six movies that the 56-year-old French director and actor has already signed, and “Chiara”, a fresco by the Italian Susanna Nicchiarelli on the lifetime of Saint Clare, the touring companion of Saint Francis of Assisi whom historical past has usually relegated to the shadows.

The race for the celebrated Golden Lion stays very open between the 23 movies within the operating, no favourite clearly rising from the lot to succeed “The Occasion”, a punchy movie on abortion, rewarded final 12 months.

This text has been printed routinely. Sources: ats / afp