This film was released on Friday 4th September 2015 and is no longer screening.

After This is Not a Film (2011), the Pirandellian Closed Curtain represents the second time that director Jafar Panahi has managed to defy the 20-year ban on filmmaking imposed upon him by the Iranian government (a third film, Taxi, is currently scheduled for release in October). Once again addressing issues surrounding the repression of creative expression, the film begins in a beach house to which a writer (co-director Kamboziya Partovi) has retreated, along with his dog. The reasons for this become clear as news reports come in of a pogrom against dogs, due to their being ‘impure’.

The peace is broken by the intrusion of a young couple fleeing a raid on a beach party, though the Writer is particularly suspicious of the woman, Melika (Maryam Moghadam). Filled with rich symbolism, this is a complex study of the creative drive. (Notes by Kevin Coyne.)

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