Notes from Underground

OF ALL THE ACCOLADES BESTOWED ON JAFAR PANAHI’S new film, 3 Faces, the Golden Orange it won for Best Film at the Antalya Film Festival has to be the most ironic: it came with a bonus of one million travel miles by Turkish Airlines, a sponsor of the festival promoting its “Miles and Smiles” program. The award surely must have brought the requisite smile to Panahi’s face, though for the wrong reason. He’s been prohibited from traveling abroad by the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Iran for 20 years—part of a severe verdict that also banned him from making films for 20 years.

As draconian as the sentence was, Panahi’s reaction was equally bold and defiant. He ignored the ban and continued to work surreptitiously, and ferociously. He has made four award-winning features in less than eight years since the ban in 2010, a more productive output than that