The Uncaged Lens: Jafar Panahi's Defiant Cinema

Even after his 2010 sentence was briefly reactivated and he was imprisoned in 2022, Panahi continued to create. His 2022 film No Bears explores parallel stories—one a documentary crew in Turkey, the other a local love story in an Iranian border village—with Panahi portraying himself, subtly yet profoundly illustrating how political and social forces create insurmountable barriers for love and creative freedom.