SOLD OUT.
 
Screening Wed. Oct. 7.
 
2 days before it opens at the Laemmle!
 
Winner of Golden Bear (best picture award) at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival
 
Internationally acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi was imprisoned in 2010 for his films and now labors under a 20-year ban from filmmaking (he could be condemned to 6 years in prison for breaking these restrictions).   With TAXI, his third and most brilliant film since his ban, he enterprisingly gets around the restriction by filming inside a cab which he drives around Tehran.  This new film is technically without credits and so evidently cannot be officially attributed to Panahi, although it is obvious enough.
 
“When we approach a new Panahi film these days, made in bravery, often in secrecy, and in direct opposition to the Iranian authorities, it tends to be with furrowed brow, and a portentous sense of the Political Importance of what we’re about to watch.  But almost from the off in his new film, TAXI, Panahi himself slyly cracks a window on all that gravity: it’s reflexive, intelligent, and provocative, to be sure, and has lots to say about Iranian society in general and the fine art of dissidence in particular, but it’s also sort of a blast.” – Jessica Kiang, The Playlist
 
“It is subtle, humorous and humane….a moving snapshot of modern Iran, and how everyone is feeling about crime and punishment and the way they live now.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
 
“Amazingly, Panahi turns the utterly simple, economical format of a camera inside a car into something relevant to his own artistic state and full of eye-opening insights into Iranian society.” – Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter
 
Language: Farsi (English subtitles)
 
Length: 1 hr. 25 min.