Can you imagine a light hearted filmmaker in jail for making Iranians smile and laugh. That is a national shame for Iran.

Sydney Film Festival 

"Tehran Taxi" is a very healthy dose of fun. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Jafar Panahi loves his country. There is everything right about this film. 

June 8, 2015

The celebrated Iranian director Jafar Panahi (click here) (The White Balloon, The Circle) has now made three films in secret since he was banned from filmmaking for "propaganda against the Islamic Republic". Despite the threat of a six-year jail term, he dramatises his own life in Tehran Taxi.

Panahi plays a jaunty taxi driver who takes passengers around Tehran – often refusing their money and recognised by some who wonder why a famous filmmaker is driving a cab with a camera on the dashboard.

His colourful fares include a couple arguing about the value of recent hangings for extortion, a badly injured man who is desperate to make a will leaving everything to his wife who would otherwise have no legal right to their possessions, and a barred lawyer who continues to work for political prisoners, including a girl arrested for attending a volleyball game.

There is also a know-it-all schoolgirl, supposedly Panahi's 10-year-old niece, who is making a video for her class. As she shoots, she lists all of the official requirements for a "screenable" film in Iran: women must wear headscarves, men must have Iranian names if they are heroes, no mention of politics and no "sordid realism" among others....