Jafar Panahi's Cinema

Notes and Ranking of all 11 features of Jafar Panahi to date:

The White Balloon (1995)

The Mirror (1997)

The Circle (2000)

Crimson Gold (2003)

Offside (2006)

This Is Not a Film (2011)

Closed Curtain (2013)

Taxi (2015)

3 Faces (2018)

No Bears (2022)

It Was Just an Accident (2025)

Jafar Panahi’s 2025 Palme d’Or win at Cannes for It Was Just an Accident means he is only one of four directors (Robert Altman, Michelangelo Antonioni and Henri-Georges Clouzot being the other 3) to have won top awards at Berlin, Cannes and Venice. Panahi won the Golden Bear at Berlin with Taxi in 2015 and the Golden Lion at Venice in 2000 with The Circle. The fact that two of have these awards have come in the last decade is incredible especially after Panahi’s 2010 sentence in Iran which raised fears that he may never direct a film again. However, he and his entire film crew and cast have shown incredible courage and creativity to not only get films made but also getting them released out of Iran.

Jafar Panahi started running into problems with authorities from his earlier films two decades ago. The reason for that stems from Panahi depicting social topics and plight of characters (especially women) who don’t have a voice. In this brilliant interview with Doug Saunders (from back in 2007) Panahi mentions reveals the following:

Doug Saunders: Has censorship been a constant through your filmmaking career, or is it more intense today?

Jafar Panahi: I started my career making children’s films, and while doing that I had no problems with censors. As soon as I started making feature films, it all started and I had problems.

Really, making children’s films was a way of saying what we wanted to say in adult films. But because of the circumstances, we chose that format because it was less prone to censorship at the time.

It just got worse and worse as time went on, and one could say that the past year or year and a half have been the darkest age for filmmaking in Iran.

Since I make a film once every 3 years, I haven’t had a chance to present the current administration with a project. But everyone around me, my friends, has had experiences that are quite awful.

Panahi goes on to mention:

In 2003 I was arrested by the information ministry; they kept me and interrogated me for four hours. In the end their question was: ‘Why don’t you just leave this country and work outside of Iran, given that the core of your supporters live there?’

Panahi’s stand back then and even now is staying in Iran and making films. His films are some of the finest made in the history of cinema despite working with barriers and restrictions other filmmakers may never encounter.

Ranking his films feels inappropriate. All 11 of his features are remarkable works of art. Each of them present fascinating ideas to ponder upon and highlight perspective that one may not think of. So this ranking is a personal preference, one that has shifted over the years and will likely still change.

Ranking all 11 of Jafar Panahi’s films:

1. Crimson Gold (2003, Director Jafar Panahi, Writer Abbas Kiarostami)

This brilliant film about class difference is also one of the most incredible cinematic collaborations in history with Panahi directing a story written by maestro Abbas Kiarostami.

Ali and Hussein are average men who go about making an honest living by working as pizza delivery men. When Ali finds an expensive purse, he comes across a receipt for an Italian necklace which costs 75 million Tomans. The two are shocked that someone could spend so much on a necklace and decide to visit the jewellery store and look at what such an expensive necklace looks like. But the jeweler refuses to let the two in because of how they are dressed. Therefore, a few days later, Hussein dresses smartly and returns to the store with his fiancée and Ali. But even then, the same jeweler manages to find a way to get the message across that store is not for people like them. This insult eats at Hussein and results in him going over the edge.

Besides this class difference, the film manages to cover other aspects of Iranian society such as how police perceive younger people in enforcing law. The film also alludes to a time when women didn't have to cover up in Iran while also depicting attitude difference of Iranians who live abroad and return to Iran.

2. The Circle (2000)

After his first two children themed films, Panahi changed gears completely with this insightful powerful film which depicts the treatment of women in Iranian society. This ranges from the inability of women to travel without the permission (or presence) of a male figure to women not being able to speak freely or live on their own terms. Any infringements against the patriarchal society means that women find themselves thrown into prison. This film completes a circle with Panahi’s recent film It Was Just an Accident which discusses the harsh treatment that both women and men get in prison.  It is safe to assume that after The Circle, Panahi put himself on the Iranian authorities list.

3. This Is Not a Film (2011, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb/Jafar Panahi)

The first film that Panahi made after his filmmaking ban is the next evolution in his cinema as this film shows that in the hands of a talented filmmaker even a tiny, confined space can be a liberating cinematic experience. The final moments capture those magical moments that Werner Herzog has claimed happen only when the camera is left recording just a little bit longer.

4. Taxi (2015)

Taxi is the third film Jafar Panahi crafted after he was banned from making films by the Iranian Government in 2010. Like This Is Not a film, the first film Panahi made under the ban, Taxi does not appear to be a scripted film and hence, not a film also.

Taxi features Jafar Panahi driving a taxi around the streets of Tehran, picking up passengers and dropping them off at different locations. All the interactions with passengers are recorded from a camera on his dashboard, so technically, Panahi is not directing anything. However, the inclusion of smart dialogues, shift in camera angles and the presence of a few memorable passengers reveals Panahi’s brilliance. Pushed into a corner by the government, Panahi has tapped into the same creative energy as The White Balloon and Crimson Gold; films he directed before the ban. He uses a taxi as a medium to bring forth relevant discussions about society, freedom, censorship, public vs private space and even film distribution while also paying a tribute towards Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten (2002), which featured a female driver.

5. The White Balloon (1995, co-written by Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi and Parviz Shahbazi)

6. The Mirror (1997)

Jafar Panahi’s first two features The White Balloon and The Mirror are the purest examples of the exciting Iranian New Wave cinema that started making waves in the 1990s.

Both films are presented from a little child’s perspective, much like Abbas Kiarostami’s earlier films. In fact, The White Balloon is co-written by Kiarostami. In many aspects, The White Balloon and The Mirror are similar but diverge when the 4^th wall is shattered half-way through The Mirror. After that point onwards, The Mirror becomes a meta film about filmmaking echoing some aspects of Kiarostami’s Close Up.

7. It Was Just an Accident (2025)

The topic of justice and retribution feels more like that of a Mohammad Rasoulof’s film, especially The Seed of the Sacred Fig and There Is No Evil, but Panahi has mentioned in interviews the story came from the experience he heard of other prisoners and also from his own experience in prison. The film sheds a light on trauma and suffering that individuals face under an oppressive system that feels like a living breathing example of The Stanford Prison Experiment, an experiment that many Latin, Asian and African countries started facing from the 1970s onward. Panahi’s film shows that the experiment isn’t over yet and even if it were over tomorrow, it would take decades (or generations) for citizens to heal.

8. No Bears (2022)

Panahi travels to the Iranian border and shows how a film can be potentially directed remotely, an appropriate nod to our times where remote work has become a lot more commonplace across the globe.

9. 3 Faces (2018)

3 Faces is the fourth film Panahi made since his filmmaking ban and was the first since that ban where he left Tehran for the countryside. This travel allows some cultural and political conversations to enter the frame and the end result is one of Panahi’s strongest works, one that even has a nod to the late master Abbas Kiarostami’s films.

10. Offside (2006)

This film is an extension of The Circle in depicting the restrictions women face in Iranian society. In Offside, Panahi shows how female soccer fans are not allowed to watch games in the stadium alongside men. The film contains plenty of magical moments such as the nervous expression on one of the girl's face as she tries to sneak into the stadium, the passion with which the guard narrates a running commentary for the girls who are held in custody and the mesmerizing moment when we finally see the beautiful green soccer field. The best part of the film unfold in the last 15-20 minutes where the camera highlights the emotions and expressions of fans who are delighted at Iran's qualification for the 2006 World Cup -- there is very little dialogue, and we can see unscripted human emotion on display.

11. Closed Curtain (2013)

Following This Is Not a Film, Panahi shows another creative way to make a film despite his ban. As per the title, the film takes place in a house with the curtains shut. What at first appears to be a tranquil setting turns out to be anything but that.