Jafar Panahi
Oro Rosso

How much do we really know about the Arab world? Frankly, very little. Almost everything we know about Muslim countries comes from watching TV or reading newspapers, which, as we know, are biased and distort reality. A piece of news that went somewhat unnoticed (as always in these cases...) was the arrest of director Jafar Panahi almost two weeks ago. Who is Jafar Panahi? He is an Iranian director who opposes the political-religious regime of Tehran and who hopes for progress and, above all, for an opening of his country. The result: obviously, the arrest. The arrest because Panahi speaks of a different Iran. He talks about it, for example, in this "Crimson Gold" (jury prize at Cannes in 2003), which describes the regularity, the everyday life of his country. A country made not only of attacks, denialism, and religious fundamentalism. An Iran made of normal people like us, not distant demons like those portrayed by the media. Panahi tells us: another Iran exists. It's no coincidence that he speaks little of religion and its distortions in this film. He shows us an Iran everyday, sleepy, with its habitual desperation.

Yes, because even if not all of Iran is fundamentalist, it undoubtedly has its problems. It has its contradictions. The director is not saying that his country is a Garden of Eden, far from it. He calmly takes us by the hand into his world of quiet, peaceful, accepted despair. Because the contradictions in Iran are so many that, in the end, one gets used to them. It's in human nature to get accustomed to everything, to all conditions, including misery. The distance between the poor and the rich (the real focus of "Crimson Gold") is abysmal, two parallel lines that never meet and always clash. And the clash hurts, it wounds. It wounds Hossein, the protagonist. It wounds Iran.

Jafar Panahi assembles scene after scene a film that is not exactly gripping, not exactly exhilarating. That is not the purpose. It's a deliberately slow film, although it must be said that the director got a bit carried away, because one always expects the film to take off, and it doesn't. That wasn't the intention, it is clear, but perhaps he exaggerated a bit. However, in any case, beneath that veneer of apparent detachment that Hossein displays, hides the atrocious irreconcilability of a nation divided between opulence and misery, the poor and the rich.

Among white gold, yellow gold, and red gold.