Taxi Tehran Film Difficulty Ranking: 4
Taxi Tehran is filmed from a taxi cab driven by Jafar Panahi. As he’s driving round Tehran, he picks up a wide range of characters from a variety of backgrounds. It’s a perfect microcosm for real life in Tehran and Iran and the perfect disguise for a banned filmmaker to practice his art.
From: Iran, Asia
Watch: Trailer, Rent on Amazon, Buy on Amazon
Next: Ten, This is Not a Film, Locke
Why Watch Taxi Tehran?
- Experience a slice of life in Iran.
- Question if it’s real or fake, just like in Panahi’s other film, This is Not a Film.
- Meet a wide range of locals.
- To support film-making to fight censorship.
The Breakdown
The first two customers in Taxi Tehran are a man and a woman. The man tells a story about a car in his neighbourhood whose tyres were stolen and replaced with bricks. He says it happens so often that the authorities should hang someone to stop others from doing it in the future. The woman takes offence and backs up the thieves by saying they might have needed to steal to get by. She asks him what his profession is to try and understand why he would say that. He refuses to answer until she answers first. She’s a teacher – which provokes an “I knew it” laugh from the man. He then reveals that he is a professional thief, only after he steps out the car. Panahi (the director and taxi driver) then drives on to pick up another customer.
Through the people that step in and out of his taxi, we meet a wide range of people in Tehran, from the professional thief and some superstitious old ladies, to his niece. Panahi captures everything from four cameras: two set up on his dashboard (one rotating and one static), one on the back of the passenger seat, and finally, the footage from his niece’s camera. With these four cameras, Panahi shows us Tehran.
Is it real of Fake?
In the spirit of This is Not a Film, it’s not clear whether Taxi Tehran is a documentary or fiction. There’s moments which look fake, such as when people on the street bundle a motorbike accident victim into the back of the taxi with his screming wife to be rushed to the hospital. THe blood on his head and his wife’s screams look and sound fake. On the other hand, there are events which feel real. There’s a friend of Panahi that jumps into the taxi and sees the camera and instantly know’s what he’s up to. Sometimes it feels spontaneous and real, and other times it feels too unbelievably coincidental and fake.
Panahi’s intention is to keep us on our feet, but also to toy with the authorities. It’s all a brash statement to the Iranian censors, that despite his ban, he can still make films and distribute them (despite breaking all of the Iranian rules in making distributable films – as stated by his niece).
What to Watch Next
Firstly, you should check out Taxi Tehran’s inspiraion, Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten. Like Taxi Tehran, Ten documents passengers from a taxi cab in a single day in Tehran. If you like learning about a place by listening to the lives of the locals, you’ll love it as much (maybe more) than Taxi Tehran.
Or if you’re looking for another film in which the cameras are restricted to one car, check out Locke featuring Tom Hardy.
Or for more great, unique films from Jafar Panahi, check out This is Not a Film and The Circle.
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