Popular reviews

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  Review by pileofcrowns 2

  i.imgur.com/PPYhq70.png

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  Review by manliechan ★★★★★ 6

  This footage shows Jafar Panahi’s almost stupidly deep passion for an imaginary job that might not seem to matter with the state of the world and with gunshots and sirens polluting the background of Iran. But his exposed love for film, and the heartbreak of being banned from the one thing he cares about, and the presence of his friend who is putting his life and family at risk simply by holding a camera around Panahi, shows the importance of movie-making.
  This self-aware, charming, and gentle documentary reassures me of my own passions, and that might be the greatest thing a piece of art can do.

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 4

  My rating for this film is not based on how much I enjoyed it or how objectively good it is. It is based on what this documentary represents.

  Iranian director Panahi was sentenced to 6 years in prison and got a 20 year ban on filmmaking. Exiled in is own appartment he shot this film with his friend using a camera and his Iphone. He managed to smuggle the final result out of Iran on a USB stick hidden in a cake, to have it shown at the Cannes film festival.

  Not knowing the backstory here can probably rob watching this of its meaning. I'm glad I read up on the subject a bit before watching as what I saw…

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  Review by Jonathan White ★★★★½ 20

  My inspiration for watching this was a recent viewing of Mohammad Rasoulof’s masterpiece The White Meadows. Jafar Panahi, the subject of this quasi documentary, is a well known and respected Iranian filmmaker who recently lent his hand to Rasoulof’s film as an editor. Rasoulof’s film was released in late 2009, and both Rasoulof and Panahi were arrested, tried, sentenced, and jailed in late 2010 for film related activities, specifically propaganda against the Iranian government. Moreover, aside from their six year sentences, they were both banned from any filmmaking activity for 20 years.

  Asghar Farhadi, Iranian director of the Adademy Award winning A Separation was arrested after making comments supporting Panahi and Rasoulof in an interview after A Separation’s win. He…

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  Review by sirrah993 ★★★★★ 3

  Jafar Panahi:

  - Gets most of his films banned in his home country of Iran
  - Gets arrested by his own government
  - Gets accused of Siahnamayi (Iran's way of saying making films that challenge Iran's authority and putting Iran in a bad light)
  - Gets banned from making films for 20 years
  - Gets banned from writing screenplays for 20 years
  - Gets banned from taking interviews for 20 years
  - Gets banned from leaving his country for 20 years
  - Gets threatened with 6 years of imprisonment for challenging the status quo.

  Instead,

  Jafar Panahi ignores his sentence, makes a documentary, and smuggles it out of the country.

  So, you have This Is Not a Film, a documentary with so much insight, intelligence, and prowess into the mind of an artist that no big-budget, by the numbers Hollywood film can compete with.

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★★½ 12

  When any government or political entity denies that which is a fundamental human right (regardless of which country it is happening in) we must understand that the crime being committed against one individuals rights extends well beyond that individual.. we ALL pay the price when rights are denied ANYONE! The overall consenus should be that of complete and utter outrage!

  This may not be the film that Iranian directors Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb wanted to create but it is a film that NEEDED to be made! In an understated manner the story unfolded quite organically! On the surface it appeared overly simplistic at first glance but in reality it was truly damning!

  The reality: Jafar Panahi is under house…

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  Review by PopcornIdeology ★★★★½ 6

  “If we could tell a film, then why make a film?”

  I’ve long been fascinated with Iranian Cinema, more specifically its complete and utter submersion into the convoluted waters of metafiction. To the average person, censorship is the antithesis of creativity, the insurmountable inhibitor of innovation, and in simplest terms: the greatest threat to an artist’s integrity. In Iran however, the strict state-sanctioned censorship has distinctly caused the opposite effect, leading to some of the most groundbreaking films to ever be made. 

  This is Not a Film is both the best example of these types of films and the perfect analogy for what has been Iranian cinema for the past few years. It is no surprise that a film smuggled…

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  Review by Cormac 👑 ★★★★ 19

  Hey, you there. Yes, you. Come here for a second, won’t you. Close the door after you, oh and don’t forget to lock it tight. Have a seat but first, get those damn pesky curtains drawn. Now, tell me in complete, no-holds-barred honesty.

  What would you do if your one true calling, your burning passion, your out-and-out, life or death outlet from deep inside was one day snatched away? Would you watch it die, or find a way to tell your story regardless? What even is a story anyway? Is it a movie, when told through your eyes? And what even is a movie, if not a way to continue life? Then life, what is the point if not to…

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  Review by benhack ★★★★

  my favourite film to be transported in a cake to premiere at cannes!

  the iran government can never stop and admonish a real winner from making movies!

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  Review by Filipe Furtado

  A few weeks ago, Jonathan Rosenbaum was using social media to task other film critics for their love of This is Not a Film after mostly ignoring his previous work. Rosenbaum is dead wrong when suggesting this is not really much of a film, but he is into something with his dig on his fellow critics. Missing from almost every review about This is Not a Film (and sometimes even in places like best of the year lists) is co-director/co-star Mojtaba Mirtahmasb as if his presence/importance to the film didn’t matter next to his more famous martyred co-director. In some way Mirtahmasb is cast in the thankless role of straight man that wants to make a for more traditional denouncing…

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  Review by Rod Sedgwick ★★★★ 1

  Dedicated to: ........... Iranian Filmmakers

  It wasn't until the moments after this film that is not a film ended, that I truly began to appreciate the genius of Jafar Panahi's rather revolutionary act in not only having this film smuggled out of his country on a flash drive inside a cake, but in the seemingly deliberate attempt to communicate allegory through what would on the surface seem to be a rather simple day in the life portrait of a creative soul being censored.

  We see evidence of a visionary and revered auteur almost bursting out of his skin to remain creatively active, whether it be in acting out scenes from the script he was arrested over trying to film or…

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★★

  Along with The Tree of Life and Film Socialisme, this completely challenges the way I look at film even as it offers the best justification for a fundamental love of movies ever. Harrowing, beautiful, defiant, and even pretty funny. Panahi silently despairs throughout, yet the film's mere existence is an act of rebellion and bravery, and the result is the best defense ever for taking movies seriously.