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Taxi Tehran

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Taxi Tehran

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Summary

Comedy drama directed by and starring Jafar Panahi. Banned from making movies for 20 years by the Iranian government, film-maker Jafar Panahi instead takes on the guise of a taxi driver. Using a dashboard camera as he drives around the capital, Panahi records his passengers' thoughts and opinions on everything from sharia law and the status of women to creative integrity and DVD piracy.

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IMDB

Review

A star rating of 4 out of 5.

David Parkinson

Following the audacious This Is Not a Film (2011) and the introspective Closed Curtain (2013), dissident Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi assumes the guise of a taxi driver in his latest bid to defy the government ban on cinematic activity. Filmed by a dashboard camera and blurring the line between improv and actuality, Panahi and his passengers discuss everything from video piracy, creative integrity, sharia law, the status of women and transgression in a repressive society. But, while the discussions sometimes become heated, Panahi keeps the mood light, particularly when chatting to a DVD bootlegger (who occasionally supplies him with smuggled titles from the West) and with his perky ten-year-old niece, Hana Saeidi, whose quaint sense of right and wrong leads her to become a key player in a short film she has to make for school. Throughout, Panahi stresses the artist's right to speak his mind and make a living, and urges ordinary citizens to use their voices (on social media and elsewhere) to bring about change within the Islamic Republic. It's an ambitious agenda and demonstrates that Panahi has no intention of being silenced.

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7.3/10

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Credits

Cast

rolenameTaxi driverJafar Panahi

Crew

rolenameDirectorJafar Panahi

Details

Theatrical distributor

New Wave Films Ltd

Released on

2015-10-30

Languages

Persian

Guidance

Violence, swearing

Available on

DVD

Formats

Colour

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