Director Jafar Panahi on hope in his films

0:00From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:12Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. In the 30 years since The White Balloon, my guest, the filmmaker, Jafar Panahi, has made films that have been about the way we experience the truth. and I just told him before we got started, I saw his film, it was just an accident, which won the Palme d 'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. And I told him the last 10 minutes, I'm still reeling from that. And of course, he corrected me and said it's the last 13 minutes of the film. First of all, thank you so much for being here.

0:50Thank you and thank you for inviting me. I'm happy to be here. Let's talk about that last section of the film, It Was Just an Accident, because I think of your films as taking moments that should be about celebration, the birth of a child, as in The Circle, or a marriage, as in Crimson Gold, or the birth of a child and a marriage, as in It Was Just an Accident. You take moments that are about celebration and make them about more than that. Where does that come from?

1:23In fact, you can call life moments of happiness, sadness and everything together. They are inseparable and when they are intertwined, that's when life will come and have its actual meaning and will become more believable.

1:45This is the job of a socially engaged filmmaker to take all the realities of their society and to portray them as they are. If a filmmaker dispenses with any of these it means that they are not telling the truth or a portion of reality. But it's also about how these moments happen everywhere. They cannot be extricated from any society.

2:18Yes, that is the case anywhere in the world. I am speaking about the society I live in where I live in in the world. And it is due to these similarities that anywhere in the world the film is shown, the audience is able to relate to it. I think, though, that these moments, because they come right next to moments of terror and moments of people asking themselves what their futures will be, make them much more fraught.

2:55I don't know if I can call them fraught, but I know that they will be tolerated better. For me, these moments of humanity make life in your movies that much more dear and that much more richly and fully lived.

3:20The center of socially engaged films is the human. The focus is on the human. When you look at the human being from all aspects and you bring all aspects close to each other, the humanistic ideas of the film can become highlighted, especially if you view all human beings impartially and if you don't condemn anyone and if you don't take sides with anyone. And rather, you want to be truthful to justice and you want to portray realities as they are, without wanting to categorize. On the other hand, in political films, the outlook on human beings is different. People are categorized. From the very beginning, the filmmaker is taking sides with people.

4:20It is somewhat of a partisan outlook. If you are agreeing with my party, you are the good part, and if you disagree with my party, you are in the bad group. And this is exactly the difference between political films and social films. But when you bring a political subject into social films, then it changes the way it looks. human beings are not judged based on the idea of being in agreement or in disagreement with you. Rather, the audience can assess the structure in a society and the people are assessed based on the structure in each society. Is that why so often in your films, because they are not ideological, we are not sure what is true and what is not because each character has a different truth?

5:21We let the audience judge for themselves. Not that we don't know what happens, but we have our own interpretation. And when I say we, I mean all the audience members, each and every one of them. Not everyone has the same interpretation because the filmmaker has not taken sides and the film has not taken sides. So for as many number of audience members, there are going to be interpretations. It's the treatment, my guess, is director Jafar Panahi. In his 30th year of filmmaking, his newest film is It Was Just an Accident. We could almost say that It Was Just an Accident is Rashomon, because there are three points of view about something that has happened, the way these people feel about it.

6:14Yes, in Rashomon, it's looking from three different angles. This is the visual development of the story. But in this film, everything is being said to the audience very clearly in a raw fashion. Content is almost the same, but the visual illustration and the visual narrative is different. It is, but I was thinking about the opening where you introduce us to a family and the joy and the messiness of family. And it's a very sympathetic portrayal of a character we will come to know a lot more about and ask questions about.

6:58Yes, in the beginning, we start by giving signs. What class of society does this family belong to? What kind of ideology they belong to? What is their spirits? and we see that a person can be sad and upset about a simple accident. The red light that is on his face is signifying that he may be afraid of blood. He has a religious state-related ideology and we also show the newer generation who doubts that belief. These are all signs that we're going to use later on in the film. Us two, as audience members, will get in doubt like the characters. See, there's so much to talk about here, because the films all start off with what seems like a simple idea.

7:56This is who this person is. This is their life. And each scene makes it more and more complex. and what seems like is anecdotal is in fact really driven by an emotional plot.

8:15I really think that you cannot judge people based on the surface and you cannot condemn a person or think differently about them. You also have to allow another person to speak and then you can judge. You talked about the last 10 minutes of the film, and I said, so what you mean is from the middle of that 13-minute shot. Why is that shot 13 minutes? Why is that shot closed on that particular character? Why do we not follow other characters when they come into the frame and we just focus on this one character? They're all coming from the thoughts behind the film. and the thought behind the film is we have to be just.

9:02In the other sequences and shots of the film, all the characters are speaking about one character who is absent. He is there in a box. But now what do we need to do if we want to be visually just? We have to have a shot in which he is present and the rest are absent. As if that character is saying, this shot is mine, it's my share of the film, and you cannot come into the frame. So we stay on this one character so that we can understand him. And this belongs to the cinema that thinks everyone has to speak. The cinema that believes people are human beings and cannot be judged or condemned from the beginning.

9:48We'll take a break and have more of my conversation with director, writer, and actor Jafar Panahi, his newest film as director is It Was Just an Accident.

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10:31Welcome back. It's The Treatment. I'm talking to Jafar Panahi, the director of many films, including his newest, which won the Palme d 'Ortha Khan Film Festival. It was just an accident. For me, it's your question about the nature of truth, the nature of an incident, being inside that house with the windows closed, or being in that box or driving around the block deciding if you're going to do something to somebody or not. There's always a truth that's not being spoken that we as the audience have to fill in for ourselves. Because I think truth is relative, is a relative interpretation. It's an interpretation of the reality we see and it is an individual interpretation.

11:19You see it from the window of your own room, and you judge it from that window. Now change your spot. What do you see? What is the truth and what is the reality? I think what touches me so much about your work is that even with all that you've gone through, there is no cynicism.

11:41But you cannot continue life without hope. To me, hope is thinking that I still have not made my best film. And I have to stay alive in order to make my best film. So that's what I strive for. At the same time, I am not embarrassed by any of the films I have made. When I begin making a film, I say to myself, this is going to be my best film. When the film ends and it is screened, I say to myself, okay, you tried, and the next film will be your best film. Good for a filmmaker who has still not made their best film. Because as soon as they say this is my best film, they will not strive anymore. And they will not continue.

12:23And the continuation is the most important thing. What you're saying is so interesting to me because in all of your films, there's a moment where the character decides to be hopeful. That's why that last shot is so important to me. And there's a moment like that in each of your films where the character decides, this is the way I'm going to lead my life.

12:49In this film, we worked really hard on sound. In the end of the film, you witness everything through sound. Is the sound of footsteps real or is it metaphorical? If it is real, then that person actually did come. He came, he waited, he did nothing, and he turned around. While he could have done something, and he could have arrested him. And you as the audience become hopeful that Iqbal as a character has been influenced, has been impacted at least a bit, and Wahid has done something. Or we can think that that sound is imagined, as all the characters throughout the film said that they have been imagining this sound for a number of years.

13:40Even if the sound is in their mind, there is still room for hope because that person, Erbal, could have come and he didn't come. So either way, there is hope. And hope for the future, that perhaps in the future, this cycle of violence is going to end. That something is going to move people and they will come into an understanding. But I wish I hadn't said all this here because your listeners will not going to go and see the film. Oh, yes, they will. But I want to ask you about that, about your casting. Because you cast these actors who can project one thing when we meet them. And then the more time we spend with them, we see there's much more going on.

14:29What is it that you look for when you first sit down with these actors?

14:39Before having this conversation, the more important thing is casting them. Because most of them are non-professional actors, and a lot of them have come into the camera, in front of the camera for the first time, their casting has to be very important. I believe that all human beings can act, and can act well. They just have to be chosen correctly. The most important thing to me is the physical characteristics of an actor. Are these physical characteristics in line with what is in the character? The face, the looks, the way of movement, all of it. When this is all correct, in the first look, the audience can believe the character.

15:24And in my films, I actually try for the actors not to act. I want them to be themselves. And that's why I never give my actors the full dialogues. Because if you give the full dialogues to non-professional actors, they tend to want to memorize the whole thing, and they want to bring out everything word by word. And then they concentrate on telling the dialogues, not on living the character. We usually read through the dialogue once, and then I tell the actor, forget about all the nonsense that I wrote, but then begin with this point and end at that point. And you say it the way you want to say it.

16:09And then the actor will say the dialogue with their own culture and with their own being without having to memorize anything. And the repetition of this method will bring out the character based on what the actor has lived and has experienced in their life. So choice plus the way you treat an actor plus the way you guide an actor can bring out a particular performance. If a performance is not good, it's not the fault of the actor, it's the fault of the director. Either the director has not chosen that person correctly or the director has not guided that actor correctly. Everyone can act. That is the most hopeful thing I have ever heard.

16:59It's the treatment. You're listening to my conversation with writer, director, and sometimes actor, Jafar Panahi. His newest film is It Was Just an Accident. Do you go back and watch your films? And when you watch the early ones, when you see The Circle or The White Balloon, what is your feeling? Does it feel like kind of a time capsule for you?

17:24I think the most important thing for a filmmaker is to be honest with themselves. And to look at their films in their own solitude when they're alone and they're not pretending. And ask whether this was the film they wanted to make. Ask whether they believe it's a good film. Yes, I have seen my films. And as I said before, I have not been embarrassed by making any of them. The White Balloon, The Circle and my other films are products of their time and the circumstances I lived in. Because socially engaged filmmakers make films based on the circumstances they live in. But of course, if I were to make any of those films now, maybe perhaps I would make them in another way.

18:12Because my society is different now compared to 30 years ago. What was it like to get to go to Cannes, to get to go to France, to see that film, to see it was just an accident with that audience? What was that like for you?

18:33I had not been able to see any of my films for 17 years with an audience. The only film of mine that was ever screened in Iran was The White Balloon. The rest were not screened. Until I was banned from leaving, I had seen the rest of my films outside Iran. It is my wish to see all my films in my own country with people who speak my language. The advantage of seeing your film with an audience is that you get to know your strengths and your weaknesses, and you continue to revise yourself. When I saw my film at Cannes for the first time after such a long time, I kept wondering if the audience is going to understand what I was trying to do at particular points and if they're going to have certain reactions.

19:24Exactly like a student who's made their first film. And more than my eyes looking at the screen, my ears were working around. Any breath, any smile, any moment of silence meant something to me. Had I predicted those moments, had I predicted that moment of silence or that smile? And that's when the comparison begins and you ask how much you have the potential or not, how much you can get a certain reaction from the audience. I allowed the audience to be relaxed up until the last 20 minutes of the film. I gave the audience moments of humor. And in the last 20 minutes, you made silence prevail. And the audience is wondering what is going to happen.

20:13And in the last shot, before the credits, you bring out all imaginations. When the credits end and you're about to leave the theater, the film still hasn't ended for the audience members. The film continues with the audience outside the theater until they're home. And they still continue to think about it. I believe I was successful in getting that. I believe you were too. My thanks to filmmaker Jafar Panahi and his interpreter Sheda Dayani. His newest film is director, which won the Palme d 'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, is It Was Just an Accident. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you.

20:55Thank you. Thank you.

21:05It has been quite the year for writer-director Jafar Panayi. His latest film, It Was Just an Accident, won the Palme d 'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival and just received an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature Film. He also drew another and unique distinction. He was sentenced to a year in jail for propaganda activities by Iran. Still, Panahi plans to return to his home country after awards season. Filmmakers who use their art for more than entertainment at the archive, kcrw.com slash the treatment. And kcrw.com slash the treat is where artists drop their thoughts on inspiration.

21:51The newest is from writer-director Darren Aronofsky, whose latest film is Caught Stealing. His Treat is a scrappy, low-budget Martin Scorsese film which shares elements with Caught Stealing. The show is produced and edited by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilchrist. To better days, everyone, I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treat Man.

22:21Thank you.