It can't be a film, because the acclaimed director Jafar Panahi (The Circle, etc.) has been ordered not to make any by the Iranian theocrats who have also sentenced the dissident filmmaker to an upcoming jail sentence. But while he waits, Panahi slyly brings a cameraman into his Tehran apartment to shoot a non-film, the filmmaker having tea, playing with his pet iguana, and acting out scenes from a narrative film which was stopped in the planning stages by the government. This courageous act of artistic provocation is now showing in theaters around the world, featuring Panahi, a grim optimist in the way of a Beckett character, trapped to his neck but speaking away.
