Offside
The last feature Panahi made before being banned from further filmmaking activity by the Iranian government finds him again focused on the strictures placed on women in his homeland, here in an unscripted docufiction about a diverse group of female soccer fanatics who, forbidden as all women are from attending the Iran national team’s World Cup qualifying match in Tehran, decide to take their chances by crashing the gate, much to the bafflement of the young soldiers charged with keeping order. A spirited cinematic document of real-life dissent that took home the Silver Bear at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival, and tender homage to Panahi mentor Abbas Kiarostami’s 1974 feature debut The Traveler. “Part sports-inspirational, part women’s-prison flick, Offside confounds genre as well as gender—the movie is a cinema-verité political allegory that itself is both critical and utopian.” —J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
35mm