Kritiken

If Panahi can’t stick to such a radically anti-cinema message in The Mirror, he still goes remarkably far with it. If his commitment to the idea was inconsistent, it’s understandable, especially given that he’s been imprisoned yet again.

Peeling away the layers of artifice, Panahi trades in neo-realism for cinéma vérité and, finally, a playful, unaffected post-modernism... [a] daring and funny examination of filmmaking's semi-permeable looking glass.

Panahi, who is best known for the acclaimed 1995 film "The White Balloon," is a disciple of the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, whose ultra-realistic films also deliberately undercut their own verisimilitude by revealing the filmmaking process and exploring the relation between the actors and their characters. Like those films, "The Mirror" poses the deepest questions about illusion, reality and filmmaking. Its portrait of Tehran is unforgettable.

Wafer-thin story of a young girl trying to find her way home alone in chaotic, traffic-clogged Tehran has plenty of charm and some nice observations, but desperately needs at least 15 minutes pruned from the running time.