The Iranian actress Behnaz Jafari receives a video message from a young woman who’s taped her own suicide after reaching the conclusion that she likely won’t fulfill her dream of becoming an actress. The suicide girl lives in a small village, far from Tehran, and any activity that doesn’t involve milking cows or knitting is regarded with a lot of suspicion by the locals, thus bringing dishonor. While suspecting that it is a fake, done to draw attention to herself, Behnaz sets off with director Jafar Panahi to the her village.

It'll be hard to deny it: the Cannes Festival doth Iranian cinema love. Asghar Farhadi's "Everybody knows," which stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, will open this 71st edition, in a long tradition of showing deference to Iranian cinema. Jafar Panahi, under house arrest in Tehran by order of Iran's judicial courts (he won the top prize at Berlinale for his "Tehran Taxi" in 2015), has a horse in this race, too: his film is called "Three faces."

The film world a political injustice loveth (but it also loveth good cinema). And in a perfect storm of urgent, inspired filmmaking and jurisdictional accuracy the Golden Bear, the top award at the Berlinale, went to Jafar Panahi for his film "Taxi," a day after the FIPRESCI prize was given to him. Many of the other awards given out last night went to the underdogs, directors making cinema on a small but vital scale.

Gallic cinema's three most visible actresses, Juliette Binoche, Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert, will be present at Berlin next month, their latest films having been selected for the festival as announced by the festival’s organizers just before the weekend. Catherine Deneuve will be presenting “Elle S’en Va” (“She’s leaving,” in French) by Emmanuelle Bercot, Huppert appears in “La Religieuse” (The Nun) dir-

Renowned Iranian director Jafar Panahi (The Circle, and one of [...]

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One filmmaker is the thorn in an authoritarian state's side--can you guess which one? As everyone knows by now Jafar Panahi was handed down a harsh sentence by the Iranian government. This kind of puts the profession of filmmaker back into perspective, doesn't it? According to Farideh Gheirat, this lawyer, the "Offside" director got six years in jail and will be forbidden to make movies, write scripts or leave the country for the next twenty years. "The sentence is so harsh because the judge said that Panahi had been persistent in his actions," the lawyer said. "It is unacceptable."