Taxi Tehran Reviews

A minor exercise and a major Berlin bear. When I see Panahi fightinng against iranian soft religious censorship with humor I remember cuban comedies of the 80s.

To be honest, even though Jafar Panahi is a really acclaimed director, I have to admit it, I'm actually not really familiar with his work (I looked it up and it seems that his other movies look pretty amazing so I should definitely check them out when I have the opportunity). Anyway, even though Panahi is considered as a great director abroad, he doesn't seem to have the same success in Iran when he has actually been banned to make movies for 20 years. This feature was therefore his 3rd production following this ban which apparently didn't stop him and, this time, he decided to film everything from a taxi to make it easier to conceal the filming process. This was definitely an intriguing set-up and there was some great potential but, to be honest, I thought it was slightly underwhelming. I mean, the fist scene was quite brilliant and you wonder, at first, if the whole thing might be actually for real but, pretty soon, it became obvious that those were all actors. But that wasn't the main issue. The biggest problem I had is that Panahi spent too much time with the same people and most of them, instead of being some regular taxi customers like the people in the first scene, were people he already knew which made the whole thing even faker. Anyway, to conclude, even though it didn't completely work for me, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Jafar Panahi's work.