Jafar Panahi / Iran 2022 / 106 min / 12A / Subtitles
This Iranian drama received the Special Jury prize at the Venice
Film Festival 2022,being a deceptively simple story with complex
layers. The now jailed director plays a version of himself forced to
direct his new film, set in Turkey, from an Iranian village. This
piece of incisive film-making is a love story involving an Iranian
couple who made it to Turkey . The director himself is drawn into
another love story in his Iranian village where there is a dispute
between two men claiming the hand of a local girl. There are no
bears but stories are made up about them to scare the residents,
just as Iranian people are supposed to be afraid of the morality police.