Cinema Releases - 3 Faces

Week Commencing 29th March

Week Commencing 5th April

Week Commencing 12th April

Week Commencing 19th April

Week Commencing 26th April

★★★★★

"3 Faces is Panahi at his best. The holistic vision of a nation is all at once generous and embracing, alarming and admonitory, bleak and beautiful. Truth is delivered to us by an artist who has suffered it. Beauty is conjured by an artist who sees it everywhere, just as he sees the humanity that lurks, somewhere, however arduously concealed, even in the seemingly inhuman."

Nigel Andrews, THE FINANCIAL TIMES

★★★★★

" A magical journey...a huge achievement...a beautifully breezy take on misogyny that keeps you guessing till the end."

Charlotte O'Sullivan, EVENING STANDARD

★★★★

"Funny and incisive."

Wendy Ide, THE OBSERVER

★★★★

"A sly and provocative meditation on the role of creative souls...feels like a tribute to his great compatriot and mentor Abbas Kiarostami."

Dave Calhoun, TIME OUT

★★★★★

"Jafar Panahi makes films of great charm, gentleness and care, only teasingly fictionalised...delightful."

David Sexton, THE EVENING STANDARD

★★★★

"This brisk road movie from Jafar Panahi sees the Iranian director on top observational form."

Trevor Johnston, LITTLE WHITE LIES

★★★★

“Jafar Panahi’s witty and reflective drama…Panahi elegantly shows masculinity and patriarchal roles are just as constructed as roles in a film.”

Ed Potton, THE TIMES

★★★★

"Part intriguing mystery, part examination of clashing traditional and modern cultures, it once again exhibits Panahi's ability to interrogate Iran's inner divisions without imposing easy judgments."

Raphael Abraham, THE FINANCIAL TIMES

"Jafar Panahi has here created a quietly engaging quasi-realist parable, part of his ongoing and unique creative cine-autobiography, full of intelligence and humility and a real respect for women and female actors.  It is gentle, elusive, and redolent of this director's mysterious Iranian zen...rewarding."

Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN

“Panahi’s film-making ban has not panned out as his oppressors hoped.

In the final scene he presents for our inspection a damaged image and asks: what’s wrong with this picture.”

Ryan Gilbey, THE NEW STATESMAN

★★★★

“Full of poignant and thoughtful subtext 3 Faces is a critique of tradition in contemporary society and the value of the arts.

Andrew Murray, UPCOMING

“A delightful road-movie.” “A fascinating film…compelling narrative…engaging picture of rural Iran and it’s country.”

MORNING STAR

“3 Faces is a critique of tradition in contemporary society and the value of the arts...A series of disputes where each side believes things to be rigid and binary. Panahi is skilled in showing the audience not only this tension, but the grey areas that the protagonists cannot see.”

BATTLE ROYALE WITH CHEESE

★★★★

"In this subtly charming film, Panahi (The White Balloon), an artist much harassed by the Iranian government, investigates a society's relationship with cinema and celebrity."

"It's full of delicate metaphors and gentle humour."

Kate Taylor, GLOBE & MAIL

"3 Faces" may be modest and low-key on the surface, but its surprises are worth preserving, its insights casually profound."

"A beautiful movie...an artful, surprising and thrillingly intelligent story."

Justin Chang, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Working with modest means and astonishing determination, he makes movies that are at once acts of aesthetic will and of political resistance, as well as assertions of the existential sovereignty that here is etched in every last face...Simple and elegant.

Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES



"Sly and defiant metafictional road movie."

Richard Brody, THE NEW YORKER

"Three Faces is a subtle and beautiful exploration of female relationships without men told through the limited perspective of the excluded man, who offers a gentle and incisive look at the necessity of his own exclusion."

Missouri Williams, ANOTHER GAZE

3 FACES by Jafar Panahi - "A beautiful expression of artistic solidarity."

Sam C. Mac, SLANT MAGAZINE

"This is Jafar Panahi, a filmmaker with more cause than most to feel victimized, turning a deeply respectful, artful and compassionate eye outward, to the struggles of others, and finding such empathy there that the film amounts to a heartfelt statement of solidarity. He is perhaps becoming resigned to his bondage, even as he?s becoming more adept at working around it, but with ?3 Faces,? the caged Panahi is determined to sing someone else?s song, and in times like these, such generosity of spirit is its own quietly fierce act of cinematic defiance."

Jessica Kiang, VARIETY

Alan Zilberman, WASHINGTON CITY PAPER

"As a filmmaker, Panahi observes the modesty of women demanded by Iranian culture, but nonetheless nods towards the boundless spirit of those same women, something that he, like us, remain distanced from a moving and wise observation by a master chronicler of human beings."

"A modern, humanist gem"

Bradley Warren, THE PLAYLIST

"Charming Iranian cinema at its purest."

Deborah Young, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

"Three Faces feels more in line with the canny feminist leanings of Panahi's earlier films, from The Mirror to Offside.

The director's latest thoughtful work widens his lens to look beyond his own challenges with artistic oppression."

Erik Kohn, INDIEWIRE