Always Good Movies

Direction: Jafar Panahi
Country: Iran

Filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was arrested in July 2022 for propaganda against the Iranian regime, releases another clandestine film that shows his tenacious resistance in the face of an outrageous governmental ban that impedes him from working normally and leaving the country. Even bounded and watched in his moves, his creativity and true passion for cinema are outstanding.

No Bears is a smartly scripted independent film that is as attractive in form as in substance. It’s a fiction-reality hybrid tragedy with a few subtle touches of comedy whose rewards are timeless.

Panahi stars as himself. He spends a number of days in a small Iranian village near the Turkish border, but is furtively directing a film in Tehran with the help of a small crew. They are attempting to stage the true story of Zara (Mina Kavani) and Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei), a married couple who strive to leave the country with fake passports. At the same time, in the village, he witnesses the tragedy of a young couple in love, betrayed by the severity of outdated ancient traditions.

Standing near the border, the filmmaker is tempted to cross it. He’s observed closely by suspicious and superstitious locals, and learns that even taking a simple picture can cause him serious problems.

The action tenses up by the end, and there’s a level of urgency and frustration that screams in every shot; it’s the pure magic of cinema versus the harsh pain of reality presented with simple scenarios and genuine characters. I’m amazed at how Panahi transforms the truth to tell the truth, creating situations with astringent emotion and sharp political commentary. When censors try to tie his hands, he responds with this: a new gem of Iranian cinema.

Direction: Lise Akoka, Romane Guéret
Country: France

Embracing a docu-fiction style that works for most of its time, The Worst Ones - the first feature from directors Lise Akoka and Romane Guéret - is designed to trigger emotional responses with disarmingly honest portrayals. It’s a sympathetic, interestingly structured mise en abyme carried by young non-professional actors. The film, which took more than three years to come to life, is an extension of their 2016 short film Chasse Royale.

The directors focus is the backstage of a painstaking casting process (they actually assessed hundreds of youngsters’ acting improvisations) and subsequent filming in the underprivileged Picasso neighborhood located in the Northern French city of Boulogne-Sur-Mer. Four teenagers - considered the worst ones by the local people - are chosen by a questionable Belgian film director, Gabriel (Johan Heldenbergh). They are Jessy (Loïc Pech), who had problems with the law; Ryan (Timéo Mahaut), who lives with his sister and never cries; the moody Maylis (Mélina Vanderplancke), who is not sure if she wants to participate in the film; and Lily (Mallory Wanecque), who earned a bad reputation at school after losing her little brother to cancer. Despite the interesting characters, I found the director to be the most intriguing of them all.

The film’s main victories come from its magnificent ability to move the focus from children to children captured in their own environment, and its unwillingness to fall back on convenient labels and the usual soap operatics. Yet, there are a few awkward moments that stem from the fabricated shooting scenes. Wanecque and Mahaut win us with their performances, and the worst become the best as their candor emerges in front of an observant camera that is avid at capturing their reactions, whether spontaneous or imposed.