Closed Curtain

Jafar Panahi’s semi-documentary This Is Not a Film visualised and articulated his plight after a draconian sentence from the Iranian government (regarding political activism) saw him forced to live under house arrest, barred from leaving Iran, and officially banned from making films for two decades. Nonetheless, Closed Curtain is the second feature he's made since, through elaborate loopholes.

Rather than using his Tehran apartment as last time, Panahi’s vacation home provides the setting here for what initially seems like a very different film. We start with a middle-aged writer cooped up in the house, curtains closed, in hiding with his dog after the government bans the creatures from the streets. Their solitude is short-lived, though, as mysterious intruders soon enter. There’s a pleasingly surreal melancholy to where the film goes, and then it all turns quite meta indeed as Panahi enters as himself. While that initial moment provides a very visceral stir, where proceedings go from there make Closed Curtain feel like a meandering rehash of the prior (not a) film.