Films We Like presents NO BEARS, A film by Jafar Panahi.

  • Special Jury Prize – Venice Film Festival 2022

Opens across Canada on Friday, December 23, 2022

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s (The White Balloon, 3 Faces, Taxi) newest film, NO BEARS, opens in theatres across Canada on Friday, December 23, 2022. Filmed entirely in secret, Films We Like are proud to present this brave new film for Canadians to see.

During his long distinguished career, Panahi has repeatedly been detained and jailed, or put under house arrest, on vague charges of “propaganda against the system,” and has also been banned from making films, writing scripts, traveling abroad or giving interviews.

With NO BEARS, Panahi continues his interrogation of authority through cinema with a film about two couples who come up against the social forces around them. As he has done previously, Panahi plays himself in the film, stationed in a village where he remotely directs a crew shooting a film just miles away, on the other side of the Iranian border in Turkey.

With the help of his assistant director, who visits him nightly to deliver a hard drive full of footage, Panahi builds a story about a couple attempting to secure fake passports so that they can flee to France. At the same time, he becomes unwittingly involved in the politics of the village in which he’s staying. A group of elders pay a visit, asking him to share a photograph he allegedly took of a local couple in a forbidden relationship. When he insists he took no such photo, the village men refuse to believe him. As the drama escalates, it explores the ways in which dire consequences can bubble up out of seemingly insignificant artistic actions.

Through these parallel narrative trajectories, Panahi considers the repercussions for people who participate in his work, willingly or not, in a thoughtful and engaging meta-commentary that fans of his previous films will appreciate. Faced with so many challenges in his homeland, NO BEARS finds Panahi reflecting on his inability to leave his country, even if it might be as easy as stepping over an invisible line, somewhere on a stony hill, in the dark of night.

ABOUT FILMS WE LIKE

Founded by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ron Mann (Grass, Comic Book Confidential, Carmine Street Guitars) Films We Like is a boutique distributor of documentary, independent, and international films in Canada. Recent releases include Anonymous Club, The Passengers of the Night and Montana Story.

Running time: 107 minutes
Farsi, Azri with English subtitles

Media contact:
Virginia Kelly
V Kelly & Associates