in iran all women are banned from men's ... - New Yorker Films

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IN IRAN ALL WOMEN ARE BANNED FROM MEN’S SPORTING EVENTS
“SCORE ONE FOR THE LADIES!
PANAHI’S MOVIE IS CRITICAL AND UTOPIAN,
CINEMA VÉRITÉ AND POLITICAL ALLEGORY.”
-J. Hoberman, THE VILLAGE VOICE
“GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN...
BUT THAT’S NOT EASY IN IRAN. A WONDERFULLY
FUNNY, OUTSPOKEN SHAGGY-DOG STORY!”
-Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
WINNER
SILVER BEAR
OFFICIAL SELECTION
New York Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION
American Film Institute Film Festival
OFFSIDE
FROM THE DIRECTOR OF “THE WHITE BALLOON” AND “THE CIRCLE”
A FILM BY JAFAR PANAHI
www.newyorkerfilms.com
The latest film from Jafar Panahi (The Circle, Crimson Gold), one of Iran’s greatest directors, is both hilarious and
poignant. OFFSIDE is a most unusual sports film, a feminist comedy that is also a plea for women’s rights in Iranian
society. Here, various young women (women are banned from attending sporting events) meet up at a World-
Cup-qualifying soccer match in Tehran's Azadi stadium where they disguise themselves as men to gain entrance.
IRAN • 2007 • 93 mins • Color • In Farsi with English subtitles

FILM REVIEW
March 20, 2007
Banned in his home country, as usual, Iranian Jafar Panahi
scores with his sports movie as social commentary.
J. HOBERMAN
Jafar Panahi is a paradoxical populist. He makes crowdpleasing
art movies, often set in the midst of life—the urban
crowd is one of his subjects—and is a virtuoso director of
(non) actors. On the other hand, this most widely seen of Iranian
filmmakers is also the most frequently banned.
Like his previous hits The White Balloon and The Circle,
Panahi's soccer movie Offside is blatantly metaphoric and
powerfully concrete, deceptively simple and highly sophisticated
in its formal intelligence. Panahi may be a disciple of Iranian
modernist Abbas Kiarostami but he's closer in some ways to
Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, another maker of fictionalized
social documentaries—though Panahi works on a less epic scale
and is more attached to close-ups than long shots.
Panahi specializes in tumultuous activity in tight spaces: Offside
opens on one packed minibus and ends on another. The first
hurtles toward Tehran's Azadi Stadium where Iran is to play a
World Cup match against Bahrain; the second, a police van,
swerves through streets clogged with chanting hordes in the
game's aftermath. Offside is the funniest of Panahi's features, with
a carnival atmosphere accentuated from the get-go by the
realization that some of the fans en route to Azadi are women in
drag.
Among other proscriptions, Iranian women are not permitted to
attend sports events and, before the soccer match begins, another
game is afoot. "They're pros, they know how to get in—they know
all the tricks," one boy tells his buddy, appraising the disguised
females on a passing bus. The lone girl on their bus is, however, an
obvious novice. She's unconvincingly dressed (her idea of a boy is
too stylish) and fatally uncertain. After paying an inflated price for
a scalped ticket, she's approached by a guard, instinctively flinches
("Please don't search me"), and winds up in an improvised holding
pen on the stadium's upper level, along with a half-dozen other
girls.
In a formal as well as political sense, Offside is about what can't
be seen. The roar of the crowd is a constant but the game itself is
only intermittently glimpsed. Occasionally one of the soldiers will
report on the progress of the match—or act it out, much to the
captives' disgust. These girls are not only more street-smart than
the country boys who guard them but more soccer-smart. The
soldiers are ashamed and unhappy; their commander is an
excitable Azeri who, contemplating his corral, cannot help
reminiscing about his farm back home. (He's dumbstruck, though,
when one girl shows up in a purloined military uniform—arrested
because she was ballsy enough to seat herself in an official box.)
Given its mouthy protagonists, Offside is a voluble movie—the
real match here is between soldiers and prisoners. The two groups
have ample time to discuss the nature of the situation. Women are
banned from soccer, it's explained, so that male fans can be their
profane selves. Asked why Japanese women were admitted to the
previous match—a disaster after which seven spectators were
trampled to death—a soldier points out that they don't understand
Farsi. "Let us in," one girl assures a soldier. "We promise not to
listen."
Largely one-sided banter, the contest turns wilder when a
soldier is assigned to escort one of the women to the toilet. As the
stadium facilities are male-only, she's given a poster to wear as a
mask; for his part, the soldier is compelled to secure the graffitiinscribed
washroom in advance of her entry and then, beleaguered
as any goalie, hold off six guys trying to break through his
outstretched arms. He's saved by an Iranian goal—bladders
undrained, the fans rush back to their seats—but he loses his
charge, who rushes in as well. Score one for the ladies!
Part sports-inspirational, part women's prison film, Offside
confounds expectations regarding genre as well as gender. Panahi
has things both ways—his movie is critical and utopian, cinema
verité and political allegory. The battle of the sexes is ultimately
subsumed in nationalism but the penitentiary walls cannot hold.
The lengthy crowd scenes that end this dodgy, dexterous
performance intimate a universal liberation.
Available for rental on DVD and 35mm to all nontheatrical customers. All bookings subject to theatrical approval.
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