Taxi Teheran

A yellow cab is driving through the vibrant and colorful streets of Tehran. Very diverse passengers enter the taxi, each candidly expressing their views while being interviewed by the driver who is no one else but the Iranian director Jafar Panahi himself. His camera placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio captures the spirit of Iranian society through this comedic and dramatic drive.

Jafar Panahi was arrested in 2010, together with his wife and daughter and some fifteen other dissidents. A twenty-year ban on filmmaking was imposed upon him. But the Iranian filmmaker does not give in easy: Taxi is the third film he made despite the sanctions. About the ban on filmmaking, the director states: “I’m a filmmaker. I can’t do anything else but make films. Cinema is my expression and the meaning of my life. Nothing can prevent me from making films.”

Panahi received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2007 Movies that Matter Festival for his discerning and humane works.