3 Faces

Iranian master Jafar Panahi’s fourth feature since he was officially banned from filmmaking is a courageous act of antipatriarchal defiance from an artist who has refused to be silenced. This playful docufiction road movie begins with a smartphone video sent to the director and real-life star actress Behnaz Jafari from a desperate young woman who, distraught at her family’s refusal to let her study drama, seemingly records her own suicide. Traveling to the woman’s rural hometown to investigate, Panahi and Jafari find themselves launched on a slyly comic, quietly revelatory journey that builds in narrative, thematic, and visual intricacy to put forth a grand expression of community and solidarity under the eye of oppression.