Critics reviews

It's admirable as an act of political resistance. As cinema, it’s surprisingly sublime.

At the time of his arrest, Panahi was about to shoot another film. Unable to make it, Panahi decided to act it out from Mirtahmasb's camera. Deprived of his locations, deprived of his actors, Panahi becomes a master symbolist.

Such extraordinary, carefully deployed details pronounce both This Is Not a Film's mastery and its abounding sadness and outrage. In just over and hour, Panahi and Mirtahmasb communicate more than most filmmakers, all while vigilantly minding what they say.

The film reaches an unexpected crescendo in the final ten minutes or so, as Panahi follows his doorman on rubbish-collection routine. Unexpectedly cathartic, this sequence is a powerful testament to Panahi's filmmaking dexterity, his capacity to find poetic substance in the most ordinary of situations. THIS IS NOT A FILM is built from nothing, and yet every moment has a powerful urgency to it.

Little by little, detail by detail, “This Is Not a Film” leads to a final scene of overwhelming power.

[I]t meditates with touching simplicity on the very nature of filmmaking (which Panahi is currently banned from, for 20 years) and on Panahi’s isolated existence in Tehran.

It’s pointedly not “cinema,” but it’s still breathtakingly cinematic. It’s a political statement, an act of defiance, a master class in one auteur’s body of work and process, and a document of a life unseen.

[I]f this heroic work has a decisive message for its viewers, it comes slightly earlier, in an instruction Mirtahmasb gives to his courageous friend: “It is important that the camera stays on.”

What Panahi is saying here, what the whole movie is saying, is that his desire for creative expression cannot be quelled.

Standing at his balcony, filming the revelry with his iPhone, he seems to be saying that directing is more defiant an act than lighting a firecracker or two. Truth be told, Panahi’s poignant “Film” is infinitely more explosive.