“When they told me that I could not make films for 20 years, or write, or give interviews, or leave Iran for 20 years, I was in shock. Some time passed for me to be able to get out of that,” the director said (via a translator) of the filmmaking ban he received from the Iranian government in 2010. While Panahi admitted that there were times where the odds were too great and that it felt plenty reasonable to give up, he eventually stopped seeing that as an option. “I asked my friend [Mojtaba Mirtahmasb] to come to my place, and together, we started the project. They had told us that we could not make a film, so okay, we called it This Is Not A Film. What I want to say is that we looked for solutions to find a way. We didn’t make ourselves captive to the situation.”
While Panahi has continued to defiantly make films in Iran for the past 15 years, he recognized the obvious effect this censorship has had on the Iranian film industry even before that. “Many of the actors and directors who were at the height of their careers were forced to move on,” said the director of the number of creatives who left the country. “All the backbones of Iranian filmmaking are out. I really miss all those films that they could have made in Iran. Some of them were able to adapt and stay here and work here, but then there are others like myself who cannot leave Iran. I don’t have the courage and I don’t have the ability to leave Iran. I stayed there and I’m going to work there.” Panahi also said that he’s hearted by the number of young filmmakers he sees in the country who “are making the best films of Iranian cinema” and who “are not going to accept any censorship whatsoever.”
For his part, Scorsese ended the conversation with a call to action directed at streamers, both boutique and massive. “This has to be supported by the international distribution, I would think. Streaming platforms, film festivals, et cetera—these films would have to be supported that way for us to see them,” he said. “I think these streamers have a lot of room, and they throw things that are just not… up to the same level. There’s no reason why a Criterion, a Mubi, an Amazon couldn’t show these films. … Not just putting ’em on something—you have to kind of curate them a bit so you know where you’re going and know what you’re looking for.”
