Wide takes on Panahi’s This Is Not A Film

Wide Management will handle international sales on Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb’s This Is Not A Film. The work, which depicts a day in the life of Panahi who has been waiting for a verdict in his court appeal for several months, is an attempt to “portray the deprivation looming in Iranian cinema today,” the filmmakers said.

This Is Not A Film was just added to the official Cannes selection as a Special Screening. In a statement, the filmmakers said “The reality of being alive and the dream of keeping cinema alive motivated us to go through the existing limitations in Iranian cinema. The existing possibilities in cinema have convinced us that a filmmaker has only himself to blame if he is unable to make films. The discerning nature of art not only paves the way for the artist to overcome problems, but in the process of creativity, it turns every limitation into a subject for work. The unpleasant reality governing Iranian cinema and filmmakers today drove us to not overlook this (perhaps transient) reality and to depict parts of it that were reflected in us.”