Closed Curtain

The second film made by a director who is banned from making films. A man arrives at a villa by the sea carrying a bag. He closes every curtain and blacks out the windows. A dog comes out of the bag. The reason: there are round-ups of dogs and he is trying to hide his. Then two people come into the house. A woman and her brother; they say they are running from the police. The woman does not leave. Halfway through, the film breaks. The director himself walks into the house, and from that point which part is fiction and which is real becomes uncertain. The characters talk to the director, some scenes are taken back, and the house turns into a set. That is the real subject: someone forbidden to work trying to work inside his own house, inside his own head. The closed curtain is the direct image of it. It is among the films Jafar Panahi made despite the ban; it was completed in secret and taken out of the country. It won a prize for its screenplay in Berlin. Jafar Panahi and Kambuzia Partovi directed. An important production for anyone who likes cinema about cinema and experimental storytelling. For a viewer expecting a straight story, the film changes structure entirely in the middle and stays deliberately unresolved.