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Why No Bears by Jafar Panahi Is a Must-See Movie

From a reader:

The Los Angeles Times review (12/19/2022) called the Iranian movie No Bears “the best film of 2022” and insightfully noted, “Cinema, like the world itself, is full of invisible boundaries, governed by rules and assumptions that Panahi has long challenged with extraordinary resourcefulness and good-natured cunning.”

No Bears definitely is one of Panahi’s best award-winning films as writer, producer, director and actor (as himself). It’s a multi-layered story that makes you laugh, cry, even squirm in your seat or yell at the screen. But above all it makes you THINK about the world and what will he AND what should you do about it. He doesn’t answer the question but asks himself and his audience. It is not without risks as he points out the brutal inhumanity of archaic social relations that trap even those with the best of intentions and strivings. He does this without a hint of condescension but includes himself in the script and the reality.

It is risky for Panahi to continue making films like No Bears that point to the need for social change, even if done in the most artful ways. He has been jailed by Iran’s theocrats many times. In 2010, he was banned from making films inside Iran for 20 years and banned from leaving Iran for that time. In 2011, he made This Is Not a Film, which was smuggled out of Iran on a USB drive inside a birthday cake so it could be screened at the Cannes Film Festival in France. He didn’t retreat or retire but pioneered how to direct films remotely and won numerous awards. In 2015, he made Taxi, where he put his camera on the car dash as he drove Tehran’s inhabitants about town, capturing their life and struggles, including the brave defense lawyer and political prisoner, Nasrin Sotoudeh. 

No Bears was released shortly after Panahi was jailed in July 2022 when he went to protest the imprisonment of two of his colleagues, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad. On February 1, 2023 Panahi went on a hunger strike refusing food, drinks and medicine but was temporarily released on bail a few days later. 

Immediately, he spoke out saying he cannot be happy while so many other political prisoners are still locked up. This is likely not the last we will see of Panahi’s defiant spirit and there is no better way to celebrate this than to watch No Bears. Take the Emergency Appeal from the International Emergency Campagin to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners NOW with you to continue the urgent fight to free ALL of Iran’s political prisoners.

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From the genocide in Gaza, to the growing threat of world war between nuclear powers, to escalating environmental devastation… the capitalist-imperialist system ruling over us is a horror for billions around the world and is tearing up the fabric of life on earth. Now the all-out battle within the U.S. ruling class, between fascist Republicans and war criminal Democrats, is coming to a head—likely during, or before, the coming elections—ripping society apart unlike anything since the Civil War.

Bob Avakian (BA), revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, has developed a strategy to prepare for and make revolution. He’s scientifically analyzed that this is a rare time when an actual revolution has become more possible, and has laid out the sweeping vision, solid foundation and concrete blueprint for “what comes next,” in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

The website revcom.us follows and applies that leadership and is essential to all this. We post new materials from BA and curate his whole body of work. We apply the science he’s developed to analyze and expose every key event in society, every week. Revcom.us posts BA’s timely leadership for the revcoms (revolutionary communists), including his social media posts which break this down for people every week and sometimes more. We act as a guiding and connecting hub for the growing revcom movement nationwide: not just showing what’s being done, but going into what’s right and what’s wrong and rapidly learning—and recruiting new people into what has to be a rapidly growing force.

Put it this way: there will be no revolution unless this website not only “keeps going” but goes up to a whole different level!

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