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New York Film Festival: “This Is Not a Film”

Published on October 6, 2011

By Mary Iannone

Halfway through “his” documentary This Is Not a Film, Jafar Panahi sits on the floor of his home in Tehran, Iran, and mutters, “If we could tell a film, then why make a film?” The director is visibly troubled; the camera lingers as he removes his glasses and rubs his weary face. Just before, Panahi had been emphatically setting a scene from the last screenplay he wrote. But after showing the camera amateur set footage he filmed with his phone, his recreation falls terribly short.

The film is “his” only loosely, however. To give it the credit of being “Directed by Jafar Panahi” would be, amazingly, against the law in Iran. He is the onscreen subject, occasionally the camera operator, and it is implied that he had a hand in editing the footage. On December 20th, 2010, Panahi was sentenced by the Iranian government to six years in prison as well as a twenty-year ban against making or directing any movies, including writing screenplays. So in a way of skirting around these restrictions, Panahi calls up his friend (and main camera operator of This Is Not a Film) Mojbata Mirtahmasb to film him reading off the final screenplay he never got to record. With almost boyish enthusiasm, Panahi blocks out the scene using masking tape on his living room area rug - “This is the door to the house…these are the stairs to the girl’s room.”

But then comes that moment when all the energy seems to drain out of him, replaced by frustration and unmistakable sadness. Of course you can’t simply tell a film, his words imply. That’s why the purest message from This Is Not a Film is that no matter what laws are laid down, a filmmaker will always find a way to be a filmmaker. Panahi may only have intended to have Mirtahmasb film his undeveloped screenplay (warning him on the phone, “Don’t tell anyone you’re coming over”), but the film that results carries so much more weight.

One of the most amazing elements of This Is Not a Film is the prevailing sense of spontaneity. We are acutely aware of what’s going on outside of the four walls in which Panahi is confined. From the very beginning, Panahi barely flinches as we hear sirens and gunfire outside of his apartment. His attention is on the task at hand, stopping only to ruminate on the Japanese earthquake that took place on March 11th, footage of he watches with a rueful shake of his head. But when Panahi ventures out onto the street in front of his apartment building (with a warning from his companion to not let anyone see the camera in his hands), the bursts of fire make the sounds we heard that much more real.