Film: Offside

Jafar Panahi, 2006, Iran, Colour, Farsi with English subtitles, 93′ mins, Certificate: PG

This is your very rare – dare we say once in a lifetime? – chance to catch on the big screen the most exuberant, yet still fierce and raw, masterpiece of one of the world cinema’s living legends.

After years of trying, we are finally able to share it with you. Fittingly on this Mental Health Awareness Month, on its 20th anniversary, a year after its director’s latest, It Was Just an Accident, won the Palm d’ Or at the Cannes Film Festival, (it also scored a BAFTA and a couple of Oscar nominations, a few months ago), and with all eyes on Iran.

Arguably the most significant, along with his mentor Abbas Kiarostami, contributor to the Iranian New Wave cinema, Panahi has consistently been the thorn in the side of the Iranian regime, as he focused his unapologetic, discerning gaze on first children, then women and the marginalised, exposing the unyielding social, political and gendered structures of his home country.

Even before he was sentenced to 6 years in prison along with a 20-year ban on filmmaking activities in 2010, charged with “propaganda against the Islamic Republic”, he had to shoot most of his films in secret, with amateur actors, guerilla style, to avoid the Iranian authorities’ wrath. Still, since 2000’s The Circle all of them were banned or somehow censored in Iran, even though they triumphed anywhere else.

Case in point: he is one of only four directors in history – alongside Henri-Georges Clouzot, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Robert Altman – to win the top prizes at Europe’s three major film festivals, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year, the Golden Bear at Berlin for Taxi (2015), and the Golden Lion at Venice for The Circle.

Offside is his 5th feature film and it won the Silver Bear Jury Grand Prix in Berlin. Inspired by his own daughter’s antics when she was denied entry to a football stadium, it follows a group of young women, passionate football fans, who try to gain entry to the World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain, disguised as boys.

Often described as “a Farsi Bend it Like Beckham”, it is equally, highly entertaining, full of radical joy, but so much more nuanced and impactful in its sociopolitical satire. Clandestinely shot with easy to maneuver and hide digital video cameras (a first for Panahi), in part during the real life qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain, it is blessed with a spirited group of non actors university students, who came up with their own disguises as boys.

And they score. In more ways than one.

Banned in Iran just before its predicted to break box office records planned cinema release, it still became a hit, and Panahi’s most seen film by his countrymen and – most importantly – countrywomen, due to its unlicensed DVD copies that became available all over the country 2 days after the ban came into force.

So, what are you waiting for? Join the revolution with us!