Film Forum

Shortlisted for the 2026 Academy Award® for International Feature Film

WINNER, PALME D’OR, 2025 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
WINNER, BEST DIRECTOR, 2025 NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE
WINNER, 2025 GOTHAM AWARDS

• Best Director
• Best International Feature
• Best Original Screenplay

In the first film by the provocative Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi (NO BEARS, THIS IS NOT A FILM) since liberation from imprisonment and a filmmaking ban, he devises a darkly comic revenge thriller with a deceptively simple premise: A family has a car accident, then pulls in to an auto shop. The mechanic, Vahid, thinks he recognizes the driver—who walks with a dragging prosthetic leg—and suspects that he is the man who tortured him in prison. Vahid kidnaps him, preparing to bury him alive, but—is he certain that this man is his torturer? Vahid gathers other survivors to verify his suspicion, with escalating consequences, as Panahi mounts incisive critiques of societal corruption and the afterburn of tyrannical rule.

2025     103 MIN.     IRAN / FRANCE / LUXEMBOURG     NEON
IN FARSI WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Open Caption (OC) Screenings:
Tuesday, December 23: 4:25
Saturday, December 27: 2:00
Sunday, December 28: 2:00
Monday, December 29: 6:00
Wednesday, December 31: 6:00
Saturday, January 3: 2:00
Sunday, January 4: 2:00
Tuesday, January 6: 2:00
Wednesday, January 7: 6:00

Reviews

ONE OF THE TEN BEST FILMS OF 2025
– Manohla Dargis and Alissa Wilkinson, The New York Times
– Justin Chang, The New Yorker
– Jake Coyle and Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press
– David Fear, Rolling Stone
– Screen Slate

“A BEAUTIFUL FILM. I have never seen anything quite like it.”
– Martin Scorsese

“ENDLESSLY FASCINATING AND EXTRAORDINARILY POWERFUL.”
– Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture

CRITIC'S PICK. “Searing... A circuitous, moving, and unexpectedly funny story of resistance... A cry from the heart, a comic howl in the dark and one of the year's essential movies.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“[A] REVENGE ROAD TRIP MASTERPIECE... A bristling, brilliant piece of work: a swift and rollicking comic thriller whose autobiographical subtext lies under the surface, like an engine beneath a chassis, or a body stowed in the trunk.”
– Adam Nayman, The New Republic

“ONE OF THE MOST DECEPTIVELY PROFOUND MOVIES OF THE YEAR... A truly remarkable parable about empathy, mercy, righteousness, regret, and unfulfilled rage.”
– David Fear, Rolling Stone

“Panahi at his most direct, his most engrossing, and his most furiously political... It is, bluntly and unabashedly, rip-roaring entertainment, propelled by flurries of comedy, bursts of emotion, and sidelong jolts of social critique... Panahi summons all the medium’s expressive powers to deliver a fierce, unambiguous denunciation of authoritarian regimes the world over.”
– Justin Chang, The New Yorker

“Cannes’ best movie… [Panahi is] back with a vengeance… It’s a movie of righteous fury and bleak comedy, a howl of anguish that ends in a sputtering laugh.”
– Sam Adams, Slate

★★★★★ “MASTERFUL. Politically charged and darkly hilarious…A journey through a country whose trauma still needs healing before healthy new bonds can begin to form.”
– Phil de Semlyen, Time Out

“A raw and blistering moral thriller.”
– David Ehrlich, IndieWire