Offside

Jafar Panahi's “Offside” is 'an engagingly subversive film about six female football fans who are arrested after smuggling themselves, dressed as men, into the all-male environment of Tehran's Azadi stadium' (for the match where Iran beat Bahrain to qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany).

How “Offside” was made is almost as absorbing as the film itself. [...] Mr Panahi explains that, having in effect been banned from working by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, he applied for permission to shoot the film using a dummy director and a scam synopsis. “Five days before the end of shooting”, he goes on, “they got wind of the fact that I was making the film and that the synopsis was a fake. We shot the final scenes on the road to Qom, outside the jurisdiction of the Tehran police.” Mr Panahi has not been prosecuted, so far.

From The Economist,  Mar 9th 2006.


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