Blowing The Whistle

For his part, Panahi warns against giving the current regime too much credit — especially as he waits to see if Offside will be given permission for general release in Iranian theaters. "If anything has been achieved in Iranian cinema, it has been due to the creativity of the filmmakers," he says. "They have decided when and under which conditions to make their films, and what ways they could find for their films to be produced and screened." But all too often creativity means leaving sensitive bits on the cutting-room floor. Moghadam agreed to make several edits to Maxx — the government found 140 "questionable" points in his 80-page screenplay — before it hit Iranian screens. Other directors alternate their unseen social projects with blockbuster family films that keep their names circulating back at home. But Panahi refuses either to self-censor or to sell out. Instead, he's on a one-man mission to project his country's social ills onto the big screen. "Every three years I make one film which I think is necessary and important," he says. "If I didn't make these kinds of films, I'd be making much more money. But that's just not my way."

Panahi may still not have the international reputation of Iran's cinematic grand masters like Cannes winner Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry) or Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Kandahar), but his unblinking, gritty style is quickly turning him into the country's most courageous social filmmaker. Poverty, censorship, the justice system, women's rights — the subjects he tackles read like a list of hot-button issues guaranteed to tick off the authorities. In his 1995 feature debut The White Balloon, a little girl out to buy a goldfish is preyed upon by hustlers trying to separate her from her cash. The Circle (2000) explores the intertwining stories of different women, all victims of a sexist society. And Crimson Gold (2003) is an exposé of economic inequality wrapped in a crime thriller. "I regard myself as a social filmmaker, not a political filmmaker," he says. "But every social film, at its base, comes into contact with political issues. Because every social problem is clearly due to some political mistake."

Panahi was denied a license to shoot Offside, so, using a fake name, he submitted a phony synopsis about a group of boys attending a football game and got the Ministry's approval. Without the equipment or funding that the government hands out to other directors, he shot with a digital camera and small crew. Five days before the shoot was finished, the authorities discovered they'd been duped. "The police in Tehran were under orders to arrest us if they saw us shooting," Panahi says. "Luckily, the only scenes we had left were in a minibus, so we drove out of the city borders where they couldn't find us."

Despite all the hassle, Panahi has made a film that's lighter and more lively than anything he's ever done. It's also his most amusing film yet. "It's a funny situation anyway — 100,000 men watching a football game but all these other people, because they are women, cannot," he says. "I didn't need to add anything to it." Panahi hasn't decided what his next film will be, but it's a safe bet the authorities won't like it. But he won't leave. "In 2004, I was summoned by the Ministry of Intelligence and they told me I was making 'black' films," Panahi says. "They asked me why I stay in Iran and told me I should leave. I replied that I would stay in Iran for as long as I can make films." And as long as someone, somewhere, is watching them.