Offside

Iran is meeting Bahrain in a final qualifier match before the World Cup in Germany 2006. Mad football enthusiasts flow to Azadi football stadium in Tehran. It has been eight years since Iran qualified for the World Cup, they cannot loose this chance. Between thousands of frantic male supporters are six women trying to get in, dressed as men. In Iran, watching football games is forbidden for women. The women are uncovered and maintained arrested in a paddock behind the stadium´s walls. From here, they still hear the roars from the match and try every possible way to persuade their captors – young, frustrated soldiers- to set them free.

Through the relationship between the astute and partly big-mouthed female football supporters, and their torpid captors, Panahi lets us feel the ecstatic thrill of a fight we do not see, while elegantly and humorously criticizing Iranian government.

Jafar Panahi is one of the leading contemporary Iranian filmmakers, winning wide-ranging international recognition and numerious prizes from major festivals for his films The White Balloon (1995), The Circle (2000) and Offside (2006). His films combine neorealist esthetics with biting humour and social commentary, with notable focus on the situation of Iranian women. Despite being banned from filmmaking by Iranian authorities since 2010 and living under house arrest for periods of time, he has continued making and distributing films. His latest film Taxi (2015), shot under clandestine conditions in Teheran, won him the Golden Bear at the Berlinale film festival.