JAFAR PANAHI'S TAXI

What can little 10-year-old Hana, a suspended lawyer named Nasrin on her way to visit a hunger striker, a DVD salesman on the run, a teacher, a man hurt in a motorcycle accident, his girlfriend and two old ladies with a goldfish possibly have in common? At first glance, nothing. Except they will all share the back seat of a taxi winding through the streets of Teheran and engage in conversation with the driver — who, despite his glasses and hat, they will recognize as none other than filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Awarded the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and filmed using three hidden cameras, Taxi sketches a portrait as rich as it is original of Iranian society today, a society where, need we remind you, Panahi is still banned from filming and must work underground (Taxi cannot be screened there). An act of resistance tinged with melancholy, this eminently reflective and self-referential film oscillates between laughter and tears, the mundane and poetic, on a ride straight to the heart