Cannes adds new films from Jafar Panahi, Mohammad Rasoulof

In a last-minute addition before the festival kicks off on May 11, Cannes has added two films from Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, both in official selection.

The directors, who have been banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government, made the films in semi-clandestine conditions and Cannes received them in recent days.

“The reality of being alive and the dream of keeping cinema alive motivated us to go through the existing limitations in Iranian cinema,” Jafar Panahi wrote in a letter sent to the Festival on May 5. “Our problems are also all of our assets. Understanding this promising paradox helped us not to lose hope, and to be able to go on since we believe wherever in the world that we live, we are going to face problems, big or small. But it is our duty not to be defeated and to find solutions”.

Good Bye (Be Omid e Didar), directed by Rasoulof, has been added to Un Certain Regard and will screen on May 13.

The feature stars Leyla Zareh, Fereshteh Sadreorafai, Shahab Hoseini and Roya Teymorian, in the story of a young lawyer in Tehran in search of a visa to leave the country.

This Is Not A Film (In Film Nist) by Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmas is a 75-minute film that will be a Special Screening, on May 20. The film is about Panahi’s waiting for a verdict of his court appeal, and the current situation in Iranian cinema.

Gilles Jacob and Thierry Fremaux said in a statement: “Mohammad Rasoulof’s film and the conditions under which it was made, Jafar Panahi’s ‘diary’ of the days of his life as an artist not allowed to work, are by their very existence a resistance to the legal action which affects them. That they send them to Cannes, at the same time, the same year, when they face the same fate, is an act of courage along with an incredible artistic message. Cannes is the international institution which protects them. Film professionals from world over will gather on the Croisette and unite, we are sure, in a sort of self-evident fellowship.”