Jafar Panahi’s Tehran Taxi DVD

Dan Edwards writes in RealTime’s On the Dox column, “Tehran Taxi is the third instalment in Panahi’s ‘cinema of confinement’—a cycle of inventive and self-reflexive features shot following the director’s arrest in 2009 and his subsequent 20-year ban from filmmaking and overseas travel” (see RealTime 107 for Dan’s review of Panahi’s This is Not a Film, 2011).

Dan writes of Tehran Taxi:
“Judging by the new film, the restrictions on Panahi’s daily existence have loosened somewhat since This is Not a Film, which was shot under conditions of virtual house arrest. In a nod to the classic Ten (1990) by his former mentor Abbas Kiarostami, Tehran Taxi is shot entirely from inside the eponymous vehicle, a conceit made possible by the miniaturised cameras of the digital age. Despite the constant driving across 82 minutes in which we never leave the cab, this is not a road movie. There is no destination and the journey itself is immaterial—most of the film is spent circling utterly nondescript streets. This car is certainly not a symbol of freedom.

“Instead, Panahi utilises the taxi as an interface between public and private space—a mobile interior in which the filmmaker can construct his work as he moves through a public realm from which he is officially excluded.”

3 copies courtesy of Madman Entertainment

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RealTime issue #132 April-May 2016