No Bears

"A complex work of novelistic density, this is among the boldest and most accomplished statements from one of the world’s exemplary filmmakers...No Bears couldn’t be more powerful as a statement of ethical seriousness, tenacity and defiance towards the bears, real or imaginary, of fear".

Screen International

"When the definitive book on dissident filmmaking is written, it will have at least several chapters and a lengthy appendix dedicated to Iran’s Jafar Panahi…inventive Illuminating autofiction builds to a tragic new twist"

Variety

"Jafar Panahi is a humanist, fascinated and forgiving of the world. He has, moreover, the instincts of an entertainer. The string of films he has made in the 12 years since he had his hands tied are sharply perceptive, but funny…
Which doesn’t mean that we should not be angry on his behalf. He’s in jail.
That really is a crime".

Deadline

"This artful telling of parallel narratives that intersect with Panahi facing the cost to himself and others of making films under an oppressive regime — completed before the director’s latest legal troubles — would be a forceful statement even without the limits imposed on his freedom....The one remaining certainty is that Panahi is among the world’s great filmmakers refusing to be silenced by authoritarian rule."

Hollywood Reporter

"The film is not a simple cry for artistic freedom. As in his other films, Panahi portrays himself as a stumbling avuncular figure who inadvertently causes harm. His artistic mission has consequences that ripple outwards, disrupting the lives of others as well as his own. Given Panahi’s own real-life suffering and repression, it is a testament to his integrity as an artist that he looks so critically at himself and so empathetically at those who are indifferent to, or might even support, his imprisonment. The final shot is a heroic acceptance of responsibility and a refusal to flee, made all the more poignant by the director’s subsequent real-life incarceration with a sentence of six years".

Sight & Sound

Lovingly-crafted autofiction…bypasses the overbearing melancholia...once again tapping into the welcome use of humour... Life, as they say, goes on, and No Bears observes people toiling away at existing while Panahi wrestles with the existential, this juxtaposition providing the cleverly timed comic relief that aids his witty social commentary.

Little White Lies

"The Iranian auteur crafts what might be his most powerful work yet in exil...Even a filmmaker, hounded and deprived, can make startlingly incisive art. Even a political prisoner cut off from it all can make his voice heard all around the world".

The Wrap (Ben Croll)

"Simple but militantly engrossing ‘No Bears’ comes to grips with the thin line between art and reality"

The Film Verdict