The award-winning artist in the biggest festivals, prevented by his incarceration from coming to defend his film "The Bears Do Not Exist", in the running for the Golden Lion, is omnipresent on the screen in a game of mirrors reflecting the complexity of his situation: that of a creator locked up in his own country.

The screening reserved for the press was greeted with a round of applause, intended as much for the film, which intersects with several plots, as for the 62-year-old filmmaker, putting himself on stage in his own role, continuing his work despite the pitfalls and the temptation to flee a country where he is harassed.

The film shows him directing from a village in Iran actors, refugees in Turkey on the other side of the border, via a videoconference application.

Jailed in July after a conviction for “propaganda against the regime”, Panahi sent the festival a letter co-signed with his colleague Mohammad Rasoulof, also detained, last week in which they accused Tehran of considering independent filmmakers “as criminals”. .

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"The history of Iranian cinema bears witness to the constant and active presence of independent directors who fought against censorship and to guarantee the survival of this art.

Among these, some are banned from making films, others have been forced into exile or reduced to solitary confinement", they denounced in their missive.

"We are scared"

Their compatriot Vahid Jalilvand, author of the second Iranian film in competition at the Mostra and present on the Lido, expressed his support to them.

"No artist or intellectual should be in prison, whether in Iran or anywhere else in the world," he told AFP on Thursday.

While the Iranian power and Panahi had been playing a subtle game of cat and mouse for years, which allowed the filmmaker to continue filming, the situation took a more dramatic turn with his incarceration.

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In a column entitled "Free Jafar!", published on Friday, the director of the Mostra, Alberto Barbera, worries about his fate and fears "a harsh punishment": "the regime has always opposed him in an aggressive and we are all afraid of what will happen to him".

Another demonstration of support was held on the red carpet of the cinema palace just before the official screening of the film in the afternoon: a flash mob brought together around a hundred people, in the first row of whom Alberto Barbera, the president of the jury Julianne Moore or the French director Audrey Diwan, winner of the Golden Lion last year and juror this year.

The participants held up placards demanding the release of filmmakers detained around the world, including of course Iranian directors, but also Burmese producer Ma Aeint and Turkish journalist and producer Cigdem Mater.

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Jafar Panahi, who began his career as an assistant to Abbas Kiarostami, won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2000 for "The Circle" and the Screenplay Prize at Cannes in 2018 with "Three Faces", three years after the 'Golden Bear in Berlin for "Taxi Tehran".

Two other films in competition were presented to festival-goers on Friday: "Les Miens" by Roschdy Zem, the most personal of the six films that the 56-year-old French director and actor has already signed, and "Chiara", a fresco by the Italian Susanna Nicchiarelli on the life of Saint Clare, the traveling companion of Saint Francis of Assisi whom history has often relegated to the shadows.

The race for the prestigious Golden Lion remains very open between the 23 films in the running, no favorite clearly emerging from the lot to succeed "The Event", a punchy film on abortion, rewarded last year.

© 2022 AFP