“Bears don’t exist”, a film about the power of cinema

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A political act on the value of freedom: this is how we can summarize the powerful “Bears don’t exist”, a new film by Jafar Panahi that won a well-deserved Special Jury Prize at the last Venice Film Festival.
A film that acquires even more value considering the situation that the author himself is experiencing: the great Iranian director was arrested last July by the government of his country to serve the sentence of six years in prison inflicted on him in 2010, because he was accused of working at anti-regime film.

In the same year, Panahi was also banned from making new films, traveling and giving interviews both in Iran and abroad, for twenty years, on charges of “propaganda against the regime”. author has shot in hiding, signing major feature films such as 2011’s “This Is Not a Film” or 2015’s “Taxi Teheran”, with which he won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. With these films, Panahi has always managed to to make his voice heard and this new work of his is no exception, in which he shifts the attention from the contradictions and injustices of the city of Tehran to those of rural Iran.

As in his previous works, the director is also the main interpreter of his films, capable of combining reality and fiction with balance: in “Bears don’t exist” Panahi is located in a village on the border with Turkey, while remotely following the production of a film that his crew is shooting in the capital.

A memorable sequence

In this film that mixes social justice and considerations on cinematographic language, the very beginning offers us an interesting reflection on the power of the image, on photography and on cinema itself: topics that will develop throughout the film, even starting from the sequence. of a local trial, in which Panahi, accused, breaks the traditions of the place and chooses to film himself, so as to underline once again how much the truth must be documented and can never be silenced. together that works perfectly, but there is one scene that stands out above all the others: a memorable moment in which the director finds himself close to crossing the Iranian border, only to then go back in a sort of anticipation of the final part in which he chooses to stay, despite the difficult relationship with the locals.A scene that summarizes the meaning of this great film, in which cinema is the weapon to try to r exist, despite everything.

Everything Everywhere

In the rooms there is also the highly anticipated “Everything Everywhere All at Once” by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known as “the Daniels”), a film that arrives in Italy after being one of the phenomena of the year in the United States , between big takings and excellent reviews.Starring is Michelle Yeoh, who plays the role of a woman who runs a small laundromat: she is always overworked and has to take care not only of her business, but also of her family. While trying to save both, the woman witnesses a rift in the multiverse, which drags her into an adventure made of parallel realities: her task now is to defeat the enemy and save the destiny of the universes, thus restoring not only harmony in the various dimensions, but also in his life and in his family. This film starts from very ambitious premises, which tries to directly challenge Marvel (for the references to the Multiverse), with a more “independent” approach and with many quotes referring to the cinema of martial arts of the Far East.The operation is curious and one of the most original of the season, but the development is redundant beyond belief, with a first part in which the same narrative patterns continue to repeat themselves. you find them, the emotions and the involvement, but the general trend over the course of about 140 minutes is fluctuating and chaotic: it is a simply crazy film, for better or for worse, which in the United States niti has been a lot overrated, but it still deserves a vision for the courage and creativity put in place in several steps.