In drawing parallels between himself, the star-crossed couple he becomes entangled with, and the lovers at the heart of his film-within-the-film, the director builds a riveting and upsetting story with the escalating pace of a thriller.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 13, 2024

No Bears is perhaps the most damning film about the oppressive Iranian regime and perhaps the saddest Panahi film I've seen.

| Jun 5, 2024

When witnessing a film like this, in which the poetic power is given by the heroic act of continuing to film despite circumstances, it is impossible not to think that fiction is a privilege... [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 18, 2024

... Perhaps Panahi's most raw and brutal film, as if the persistent censorship that engulfs him is already beginning to leave very deep wounds. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 18, 2024

The control mechanisms disguised as magical realism are one of the many elements through which the Iranian director makes stinging observations about... a country ruled by the Koran interpreted, without exceptions, by men. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 17, 2024

These visible workings foreground questions about cinema itself that usually get swept to one side, gentle provocations about ethics, truth and lies that could be asked of any film.

| Sep 26, 2023

Freedom or art? What if there’s no choice at all? Fearless Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has endured both house arrest and prison in his tireless quest to tell stories that matter under duress.

| Jun 19, 2023

No image is innocent, Panahi tells us in this ferocious, non-complacent self-portrait of the artist on the brink of collapse. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 2, 2023

The premise aims to be complex, yet I find it perplexing. Anodyne at times. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 2, 2023

A furious and devastating film. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 30, 2023

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.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 11, 2023

A film about the mental and phyisical barriers. A very well written film. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2023

A typically tricksy and self-reflective work from Jafar Panahi, No Bears marks the fifth film the Iranian director has made covertly since the authorities banned him from filmmaking and international travel in 2010.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 19, 2023

Bear becomes a metaphor for fear. The filmmaker is not frightened of any dire forces. But he is also not willing to flee the consequences of his attempts at truth-telling.

| Mar 9, 2023

In the auteur’s latest masterpiece, every moment is suffused with not just purpose, but captivating beauty.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 23, 2023

[Jafar Panahi's] latest film, NO BEARS, is an ambitious, powerful piece...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 21, 2023

A startlingly harsh work of self-critique; a two-pronged deconstruction of the artist’s oblivious egotism and bull-in-a-china-shop propensity for leaving devastation in his wake.

| Feb 21, 2023

Panahi deftly juggles his stories, merging them together in the devastating final minutes of “No Bears.”

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 16, 2023

Th film demonstrates the way that neorealism can be used to express freedom under even the harshest repression.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 12, 2023

The only happy ending here is that Panahi, against the odds, has made another film, and hopefully will be able to keep making them.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 10, 2023