This Is Not a Film (2012)
Average Rating: 8.8/10
Reviews Counted: 85
Fresh: 83 | Rotten: 2
Through simple means and filming, This is Not a Film presents a vital political statement and a snapshot of life in Iran as enemy of the state.
Average Rating: 8.9/10
Critic Reviews: 30
Fresh: 28 | Rotten: 2
Through simple means and filming, This is Not a Film presents a vital political statement and a snapshot of life in Iran as enemy of the state.
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Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 7,930
Movie Info
This clandestine documentary, shot partially on an iPhone and smuggled into France in a cake for a last-minute submission to Cannes, depicts the day-to-day life of acclaimed director Jafar Panahi (Offside, The Circle) during his house arrest in his Tehran apartment. While appealing his sentence - six years in prison and a 20 year ban from filmmaking - Panahi is seen talking to his family and lawyer on the phone, discussing his plight with Mirtahmasb and reflecting on the meaning of the art of
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Cast
-
Jafar Panahi
Jafar Panahi -
Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
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All Critics (85) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (83) | Rotten (2) | DVD (1)
This film is unique in a dreadful way: what happens on screen would not be particularly interesting without the facts surrounding its making.
Top CriticNot a conventional film, certainly, but a powerful and important statement.
There is courage and cheekiness here. What there is not is a story, or much insight or even anger; anyone expecting an indictment of Iran will be sorely disappointed.
Truly and defiantly extraordinary in its own quiet way.
This may not be a film, but it's a moving statement of defiance and despair.
It's a cry from the heart of an artist compelled to create, tell stories and respond to hostile, confounding realities.
Powerfully shows how freedom in the arts is a necessity for any country to ensure its citizens don't live a lie.
There's a tremendous power under the simple-looking surface.
No matter the constrictions on its existence, This is Not a Film is, in fact, a great one.
One mourns the tragic circumstances that caused it to be made, but the result is a sleight of hand to rank alongside Orson Welles's F for Fake.
See it any way you possibly can. It will change your life forever.
This Is Not a Film is a practical joke as much as it is a movie, and while it possesses a deadly serious undercurrent, what's most surprising is how witty the finished product is.
The complex, brilliant, heartbreaking diary of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi under house arrest in Tehran, and prohibited from making movies.
I find myself returning again and again to Jafar Panahi's apartment in Tehran, the defining location for the year in cinema, one of the defining locations in all of cinema.
"This Is Not a Film", but it manages to be a bloody great one, anyway.
The truth of what is and isn't lies deep between the lines of this brilliantly elusive meta-commentary, arguably the greatest Iranian film since Abbas Kiarostami's masterpiece Close-Up.
Predictably, not much happens in "This Is Not a Film"; dude is under house arrest, after all. But it's absorbing and clever.
What constitutes imprisonment and what constitutes a film?
[A] courageous act of artistic provocation...
Audience Reviews for This Is Not a Film
Super Reviewer
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial Integrity versus Political Agenda (Kyle Smith negative review) | 7 months ago | 0 |
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Foreign Titles
- This is not a film (DE)
- This is Not a Film (In Film Nist) (UK)
