This Is Not a Film

The title doesn't lie. It's not really a documentary either, as the directors shot the 'one day' scene over ten days. But it is an interesting idea. Stop me if you've heard this one before: a filmmaker is banned from writing and directing new material so asks his documentary maker friend to come to his apartment to shoot him re-enact it.

The story surrounding This Is Not A Film turns out to be far more stimulating that what turns up on screen. Shot in clandestine circumstances, saved onto a USB and smuggled out of Iran to Cannes in a cake in time for the 2010 film festival. That sounds like a great story. That story is not on screen, however.

Because of the political critiques that bubble under the surface on his films, Panahi has been sentenced to six years imprisonment and a twenty-year ban on filmmaking; he is appealing the sentence but his lawyer, appearing here via a phone call, isn't confident. His latest idea - a teenage girl has been accepted to college in Tehran but her traditional family are against it, locking her away in a house - has been rejected, so Panahi has asked friend and documentary maker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb to help him bring the film to life, using imaginary sets and Panahi's vivid imagination.

Frustrated with the confines and visibly moved by his inability to shoot the film, Panahi calls a halt to the process and instead talks to the camera on the art of filmmaking, the positives of amateur acting (the amateur actor directs the director, apparently), thoughts on his impending prison sentence and his future as a filmmaker. It's all a clever ploy as Panahi talks about how circumstances changed his previous films into better movies than the ones he set out to make, which is what is happening right now in front of us; but all this is a poor substitution for what sounds like an interesting original idea. Buffing out the slim 75 minute running time are many shots of Panahi on his laptop and his pet iguana, Igi, as it slithers across the tiled floors of his apartment.

The idea is admirable - what Panahi and Mirtahmasb are doing is extremely dangerous and are putting their lives on the line for their art - but the result is on the dull side.