On April 27, DGA members were given a glimpse of life in modern day Iran as seen through the eyes of young girls in director Jafar Panahi’s Offside. Inspired by the experience of his own daughter, Panahi’s film is the story of girls forced to disguise themselves as boys in order to attend their beloved soccer team’s matches. It is a smart, satirical look into the struggle for women’s rights in his country.
Panahi has been described as Iranian neo-realism. He debuted in 1995 with The White Balloon (Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival). His 1997 film, The Mirror, received the Locarno Festival’s Golden Leopard, and The Circle won the Golden Lion at the 2000 Venice Film Festival. Jafar’s Crimson Gold won the 2003 Cannes Jury Prize, and went on to win a number of best film awards. In 2006, he directed Offside, which garnered the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
In March 2010, Panahi was sentenced to prison by the Iranian Government for 6 years and banned from creative pursuits for 20 years for “...propaganda against the Islamic Republic,” an action condemned by the DGA and the worldwide film community. At the screening, Special Projects Global Cinema Committee Chair Victoria Hochberg read a written statement from Panahi.
“The world of a filmmaker is marked by the interplay between reality and dreams. The filmmaker uses reality as his inspiration, paints it with the color of his imagination, and creates a film that is a projection of his hopes and dreams.
“The reality is I have been kept from making films for the past five years and am now officially sentenced to be deprived of this right for another twenty years. But I know I will keep on turning my dreams into films in my imagination. I admit as a socially conscious filmmaker that I won’t be able to portray the daily problems and concerns of my people, but I won’t deny myself dreaming that after twenty years all the problems will be gone and I’ll be making films about the peace and prosperity in my country when I get a chance to do so again.
“The reality is they have deprived me of thinking and writing for twenty years, but they can not keep me from dreaming that in twenty years inquisition and intimidation will be replaced by freedom and free thinking.
“They have deprived me of seeing the world for twenty years. I hope that when I am free, I will be able to travel in a world without any geographic, ethnic, and ideological barriers, where people live together freely and peacefully regardless of their beliefs and convictions.
“They have condemned me to twenty years of silence. Yet in my dreams, I scream for a time when we can tolerate each other, respect each other’s opinions, and live for each other.
“Ultimately, the reality of my verdict is that I must spend six years in jail. I’ll live for the next six years hoping that my dreams will become reality. I wish my fellow filmmakers in every corner of the world would create such great films that by the time I leave the prison I will be inspired to continue to live in the world they have dreamed of in their films.
“So from now on, and for the next twenty years, I’m forced to be silent. I’m forced not to be able to see, I’m forced not to be able to think, I’m forced not to be able to make films.
“I submit to the reality of the captivity and the captors. I will look for the manifestation of my dreams in your films, hoping to find in them what I have been deprived of.”
Panahi will be will be honored at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival with the Carrosse d’Or Award (“Golden Coach”), which rewards a filmmakers’ courage and independence of thought.
