Star mission in a difficult country

Despite being officially blacklisted, Iranian director Jafar Panahi continues to make award-winning films such as 3 Faces.

Behnaz Jafari and Jafar Panahi in 3 Faces

Since the early death of Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi has replaced him as internationally Iran’s most celebrated film director — yet Panahi has been officially forbidden to make films for several years now and is unable to leave the country.

3 Faces, winner of the best screenplay award in Cannes last year, is the fourth no-budget feature he’s succeeded in making since he was officially blacklisted, and its principal theme — the role of strong women in Iranian society — is clearly one he holds dear, even though describing this kind of feminism on film is what got him into trouble in the first place.

3 Faces opens with a video taken on a mobile phone: a young woman (Marziyeh Rezaei) tearfully and with mounting hysteria complains that she’s been given the brush-off by the well-known — real-life — actress Behnaz Jafari, whose help she has sought.

The girl comes from a small village close to the border with Turkey and Azerbaijan, and she desperately wants to become an actress. She’s been accepted into an acting school in the city, but her conservative family has forbidden her to go.

Instead they insist that she agrees to an arranged marriage, and now she’s contemplating suicide. Her pleas to Jafari have gone unanswered, but one of her friends has sent a message to Panahi and the director, despite the restrictions placed on him, decides to drive to the film ­location where Jafari is acting in her latest film to deliver the girl’s request personally.

At this point 3 Faces evolves into a road movie of the type familiar from other Iranian movies.

Along the way there are various encounters — among them, with a man whose prize bull has been injured in a fall, and another man who presents Panahi with the foreskin of a boy who has recently been circumcised.

During the journey the viewer becomes even more acutely aware of the difficulties facing an independently minded young woman in Iran, especially in this ultra-conservative part of the country.

Though the film’s budget was clearly minuscule, it’s been handsomely photographed and, while it’s not always entirely comprehensible to a foreign viewer, it’s always intriguing and arresting.

And more than anything it’s great to see the work of a doggedly determined filmmaker who refuses to buckle to the demands of his country’s hard right.

Yellow is Forbidden is a portrait of fashion designer Guo Pei, whose elaborate, beautiful yet wildly impractical garments are more works of art than items of clothing. New Zealand documentary director Pietra Brettkelly was given unlimited access to Guo in the lead-up to the opening of her first Paris fashion show.

Guo came to fame in 2015 when pop star Rihanna wore one of her creations, an opulent yellow dress, at New York’s Met Gala. During the course of the film she applies for membership of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture and prepares a fashion show that’s held in the Conciergerie, the prison where Marie Antoinette spent time before her execution. Accompanied by her husband and interpreter, Guo oversees her incredibly elaborate — and clearly extremely heavy — creations in intimate detail.

Guo’s background was humble enough. Her grandmother’s feet were bound in the traditional Chinese fashion and her parents suffered under Mao’s Cultural Revolution. So her achievements are remarkable and the film will be of considerable interest to fashionistas. It’s a pity, though, that Brettkelly fails to identify many of the presumably famous icons of the fashion world who appear on camera and who play a role in Guo’s success.

3 Faces (Se Rokh) (M)

Limited release

3 stars

Yellow is Forbidden

Limited release

3 stars