Defiant career in shadows for Iranian director Panahi

Defiant career in shadows for Iranian director Panahi

Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi's latest picture defying an official ban, "Taxi", captured the Golden Bear top prize at the Berlin film festival Saturday, marking a further success from the shadows. The 54-year-old's work is celebrated in the world's arthouses but outlawed in Iran where the regime considers his gritty, socially critical productions to be subversive. He was detained for a documentary he tried to make on the unrest following Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election and officially banned from making more films for 20 years for "acting against national security and propaganda against the regime". "That is the reason why I have to continue making films under any circumstances to pay my respect and feel alive." In "Taxi", Panahi himself offers his impressions of contemporary Tehran from behind the wheel of a yellow cab, ducking the authorities' prying eyes by filming with a mounted dashboard camera.