No Bears begins on a humble city street in Turkey. The camera pans across multiple characters, each simply going about their day. It’s so curious yet nonchalant that it could easily be a documentary. However, the camera eventually focuses on Zara (Mina Kavani), a woman working her shift at the local bar. She’s told there is someone here to see her: Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei), who has finally acquired her a fake passport so she can flee the country. However, she refuses to leave after learning he can’t come with her, as he has yet to acquire his own passport. It’s a perfect, if not familiar, inciting incident, laying the groundwork for what will surely be a riveting drama. And…cut!
An assistant director appears from off-screen, speaking directly into the lens. The camera zooms out to reveal that we just watched an entire scene through a laptop screen. The man watching the laptop is Jafar Panahi, the film’s director, orchestrating the shoot via his internet connection from a remote village in Iran. This kind of digital direction became commonplace in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the reason he isn’t on-set has nothing to do with sickness. He actually isn’t allowed to leave the country. His assistant director has to cross back into Iran just to send his director rushes of the day’s shots.
New viewers may be a bit toppled over by the immediate meta commentary, but things are even more layered from the outside-in. Jafar Panahi is actually playing a semi-fictionalized version of himself; we are watching him direct in a film within the film he himself is directing, not to mention producing and co-writing. Fans of Panahi’s work come into his films expecting metatextual layers to be peeled back, but this is the most immediate it has ever felt. Not only is he playing himself as a director, but he is also playing himself as a prisoner. Though the film doesn’t make it explicitly clear why he cannot leave his village, anybody familiar with Panahi’s work knows the score.
No Bears is the fifth feature film Panahi has directed since being arrested and sentenced to prison by the Iranian government in 2010. On the grounds of propaganda and collusion, Panahi was banned from directing or writing any films for 20 years. Despite this pressure, he continues to make them illegally and smuggle them out of the country. His first film during the ban, This is Not a Film, was shot during his time in house arrest, smuggled into the Cannes Film Festival via a thumb drive (inside a cake), and touted as one of the year’s finest documentaries. It even got shortlisted for an Academy Award. Even after being arrested again earlier this year, Panahi continues to work, even if it could kill him.
Panahi’s films had already been incisive critiques on the Iranian government and its traditionalist oppression, blending fictional stories with documentary techniques and real-world corollaries. Now, after being victimized by these structures firsthand, his directorial voice has become only more scathing. Panahi, a man who has never subscribed to his country’s many traditions, has placed himself directly in the center of a film that bridges two worlds in which these traditions have laid the foundation for systemic subjugation of its people. Though there is no time travel, it feels as though he is putting Iran then and Iran now into harrowing conversation.
Half of the film takes place within the aforementioned village, centered around accusations that Panahi took photos of Gozal (Darya Alei), Jacob’s (Javad Siyahi) betrothed, with another man, Solduz (Amir Davari). Gozal and Jacob have been set to be married since birth, a long-standing Iranian tradition. Panahi claims the photos do not exist, but the village is too eager to pin blame on an outsider for a problem they cannot realistically solve themselves. At one point, Solduz confronts Panahi and sums it up: “If words were helpful, you wouldn’t be here.”
The other half of the story takes place within Panahi’s film, which is revealed to be based on the stars’ actual attempts to flee the country. As they are shooting the final scene, in which the two approach an airport taxi to finally flee, Zara has an emotional breakdown at Panahi’s hypocrisy. How can a man who is still unable to leave his country portray a happy ending when his characters attempt such an act? Zara goes missing following this revelation, and suddenly Panahi’s film becomes a documentary capturing this aftermath.
By blending fact and fiction with a sweeping brush, Panahi makes everything feel real, regardless of its source. It’s a miraculously well-constructed attack on the very structures that (poorly) attempt to suppress him and his work. Even years into breaking the rules, Panahi’s filmmaking has never felt more urgent. The camera is constantly moving – panning, gliding, sometimes shaking – through environments that are layered with visual information. How Panahi and cinematographer Amin Jafari land on such compelling compositions is closer to movie magic than most blockbusters provide.
While you’re watching the film, it’s easy to feel as though you’re witnessing a miracle — a film that is, by law, not allowed to exist, yet does and fervently so. However, the idea of a miracle is likely something Panahi would resent. In fact, it would undermine the filmmaker’s incredible resolve. In one of the film’s later scenes, an older gentleman in the community warns Panahi there are bears that roam the streets at night. When Panahi inquires further, the man admits that “there are no bears.” They’re just “stories we make up to scare people.”
Despite all the traditions that continue to be upheld, despite all that is said to scare Panahi into silence, he knows that it is all smoke and mirrors. Until they literally come to stop him (again), he will continue to make incredible cinema because there are no bears.
No Bears is now playing in New York City courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films. The film will expand to Los Angels on January 13th, followed by additional cities in subsequent weeks.
Larry Fried is a filmmaker, writer, and podcaster based in New Jersey. He is the host and creator of the podcast “My Favorite Movie is…,” a podcast dedicated to helping filmmakers make somebody’s next favorite movie. He is also the Visual Content Manager for Special Olympics New Jersey, an organization dedicated to competition and training opportunities for athletes with intellectual disabilities across the Garden State.