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Prominent Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has lost his appeal against his six-year prison sentence in Tehran for charges of “acting against national security and creating anti-regime propaganda.” In addition to mandating prison time, the Iranian government has also imposed on Panahi a twenty-year ban from film-making, writing screenplays, leaving the country and conducting interviews with any media – Iranian or foreign. All this a result of Panahi’s public support of Iran’s opposition movement and critique of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

With the help of fellow filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Panahi proceeded to document a day in his life during his appeal process. The seemingly casual impulse to shoot footage of his dilemma has resulted in a provocative film called simply, ‘This Is Not a Film.’ Smuggled to the Cannes Film Festival in France on a flash-drive hidden inside a cake last May, the film has helped raise awareness of the oppression many Iranian filmmakers face and spread international support for Panahi’s release.

In This Is Not a Film we get a glimpse of what the Iranian government has reduced Panahi’s life to. The camera follows him in his home through the simple acts of communicating with friends and family over the phone, taking care of his daughter’s pet lizard, befriending the building custodian and watching the city thrive from his apartment balcony. Panahi’s frustration with being artistically and politically silenced is painfully felt throughout the film as he repeatedly tries to act out his screenplay banned by the government about an Iranian girl also imprisoned in her home.

GUEST: Jamsheed Akrami, a Professor at William Patterson University in New Jersey, was a film critic in Iran, and is a close personal friend of Jafar Panahi, has made several documentaries about film making in Iran including The Last Cinema, Friendly Persuasion, and A Cinema of Discontent.

This is Not a Film is showing at the Pasadena Laemmle Music Hall, the BEverly Laemmle Music Hall, and the Laemmle Encino Town Center.

Visit the film’s website at www.thisisnotafilm.net.

Watch the film’s trailer here: