In a room of the Valencian Film Library, on Thursday, September 17 at 6:00 p.m., an eight-year-old girl walks alone through the streets of Tehran, with a one-dollar bill in her hand. Her dream: to buy a golden fish for the spring festival. But the money is lost. This is the beginning of ‘The White Balloon’, the first film by Jafar Panahi, which is screened as the opening of a cycle dedicated to the Iranian filmmaker. It is not just a story of childhood, but an act of artistic courage in a context where cinema becomes an act of resistance.
Panahi, born in Mianeh in 1960, is considered one of the great filmmakers of today. He has won the main awards at four of the most prestigious festivals in the world: the Palme d’Or in Cannes for ‘Un simple accident’, the Golden Lion in Venice for ‘El círculo’, the Golden Bear in Berlin for ‘Taxi Teherán’ and the Golden Leopard in Locarno for ‘El espejo’. But his international recognition has not prevented him from being constantly persecuted by the Iranian regime since 2009, accused of participating in protests and of ‘making films against the regime’.
The cycle, which can be seen until the end of October, brings together eight feature films, divided into two blocks. The first five films – ‘The White Balloon’, ‘The Mirror’, ‘The Circle’, ‘Crimson Gold’ and ‘Offside’ – were filmed before Panahi was banned from filming. In them, his gaze focuses on the human, on the everyday, on the poetic: a girl looking for her home, a war veteran who walks through rich neighborhoods, women who try to survive in an oppressive system. ‘Show humanitarian events interpreted in a poetic and artistic way’, according to his own words.
The last three, however, were made under extreme conditions. ‘This is not a movie’ (2011), ‘Taxi Tehran’ (2015) and ‘The Bears Do Not Exist’ (2017) were shot clandestinely, with hidden cameras, under house arrest, without a passport, without freedom of movement. In them, Panahi not only narrates, but he becomes his own character, transforming limitations into expressive tools. ‘An imaginative fusion between background and form in his approach to the situation of women in a patriarchal society’, the Venice jury noted about ‘The Circle’.
The cycle is not just a retrospective, but a political act. By showing these films in Valencia, the Valencian Film Archive not only celebrates an art, but also highlights the coherence of a filmmaker who, despite being prohibited from filming, continues to create. “In a world where movies are made with millions of dollars, we have made a movie about a girl who wants to buy a fish for less than a dollar,” said Panahi about his first work. That same phrase sums up the entire cycle: the power of cinema is not in the budget, but in the truth that it dares to tell.