3 Faces

In Jafar Panahi's latest film, which won the Best Screenplay Award in Cannes, actress Behnaz Jafari is distraught when she comes across a young girl's video plea for help after her family prevents her from taking up her studies at the Tehran drama conservatory.  Behnaz abandons her shoot and turns to the filmmaker Jafar Panahi to help her with the young girl's troubles. They travel by car to the rural, Azeri-speaking Northwest of Iran, where they encounter the charming and generous folk of the girl's mountain village. But Behnaz and Jafar also discover that old traditions die hard.

Premiered at the Cannes Film festival in 2018.

Iran/100min/2018

Week Commencing 29th March

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Jafar Panahi was born in 1960 in Mianeh, Iran. After studying cinema he made shorts, documentaries and TV films. He became the assistant director on Abbas Kiarostami?s Through the Olive Trees.

He directed his first feature The White Balloon, which premiered in 1977 at Cannes Directors' Fortnight and won the Camera d'Or. The Mirror premiered in 2000 in Locarno and won the Golden Leopard. The Circle premiered in 2003 In Venice and won the Golden Lion. Crimson Gold premiered in Un Certain Regard in Cannes and won The Jury Prize. Offside premiered in 2006 in Berlin and won the Silver Bear for Best Director. This is Not a Film premiered in 2012 in Cannes Official Selection in Special Screening. Closed Curtain premiered in 2013 in Berlin and won the Silver Bear for Best Script. Taxi Tehran premiered in 2015 in Berlin and won the Golden Bear. 3 Faces premiered in 2018 in Cannes and won the Best Screenplay award.

Jafar Panahi's films are known for portraying realistic images of Iranian society, and so most of them have had trouble being screened in Iran. Only his first film, The White Balloon has been granted a screening licence in Iran.

After the 2009 protests at the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Panahi was arrested twice; the second time for 86 days. The Iranian government released him on bail following pressure from international film festivals, artists and well-known filmmakers and Panahi?s own hunger strike.

According to the final judgment by the court, he was condemned to a twenty-year ban on filmmaking, screenwriting, travelling outside of the country and giving interviews. He could be condemned to six years in prison if breaking these restrictions, which is why his past three films and this one were made without authorization. Panahi has won a number of human rights prizes, such as the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and The Medal of Art for Freedom.

Filmography

2018  3 FACES Best Screenplay, Cannes Film Festival

2015 TAXI TEHRAN Golden Bear, Berlin Film Festival

2013 CLOSED CURTAIN (Pardé) Competition, Berlin Film Festival

2011 THIS IS NOT A FILM (In film nist) Special Screening, Cannes Film Festival

2006 OFFSIDE Best Director, Berlin Film Festival

2003 CRIMSON GOLD (Talaye Sorkh) Un Certain Regard

2000 THE CIRCLE (Dayereh) Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival

1997 THE MIRROR (Ayneh) Golden Leopard, Locarno Film Festival

1995 THE WHITE BALLOON (Badkonake Sefid) Caméra d'or, Cannes Film Festival

★★★★★

"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

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