Review: 'No Bears,' the best movie of 2022, has arrived in theaters
Early on in "No Bears," his brilliant, furious and despairing new movie, the Iranian writer-director Jafar Panahi draws a line in the sand. Under cover of darkness, Panahi, here playing a semi-fictional version of himself, arrives on a hill near Iran's northwestern edge, so close that he can see the lights of a Turkish city beckoning from a short distance. The temptation to cross over is unmistakable; his colleague (Reza Heydari) urges him to do it, assuring him, with an almost Mephistophelian impishness, that no harm will befall him. But Panahi refuses. Realizing that he is in fact standing on the border itself, he backs away as though stung, unable or unwilling to embrace the freedom that has slipped all too briefly into view.
It's a piercing moment, not least because the real Panahi has, since 2010, been forbidden
