No Bears

Jafar Panahi directs and stars as a version of himself in No Bears, a film that moves between fiction and documentary. Barred from leaving Iran and from working as a director there, he settles in a small village near the Turkish border and tries to supervise, from a distance, a production shooting across the frontier. The story being filmed follows a couple, Zara and Bakhtiyar, who want false passports and a way out to Europe; when Zara learns they will not travel together, she refuses to go. In the village, meanwhile, a photograph Jafar takes entangles him in the troubles of a local couple, where superstition and pressure from those around them close off the couple's wishes. Both strands deal with love obstructed by forces the lovers cannot control.

Panahi wrote and produced the film through JP Production and Jafar Panahi Film Productions. Naser Hashemi plays the sheriff, Vahid Mobaser plays Ghanbar, Bakhtiyar Panjeei plays Bakhtiyar and Mina Kavani plays Zara. It runs 107 minutes and was released in October 2022. It followed Taxi in his filmography and preceded It Was Just an Accident and Where Are You, Jafar Panahi?.

On IMDb it holds 7.2 from around 5,200 votes, and on TMDB 6.9 from a much smaller sample of 139. A critics' rating of 8.5 from 110 reviews places it clearly above both audience scores. Its worldwide box office stands at about 1 million dollars, a modest figure consistent with an art-house release.