The Mirror

Jafar Pahahi's inspiration behind his second feature film The Mirror came unexpected.
In 1996 he was a guest at Pusan International Film Festival in South-Korea, and was captivated by a young girl sitting on a park bench, staring blankly into the air. There was something familiar about her look, he had seen it several times back in Iran without giving it much thought. He decided to find an inexperienced actor, and let the storyline unfold freely: “I chose a precocious child and placed her in a situation where she is left all to her own devices. Everyone she meets on her journey is wearing a mask or playing a role. I wanted to throw these masks away.”
About the girl he chose for the lead role, he said: “I noticed a feeling of emptiness in her, and a will to prove herself to the world.”

With this as a basis for the film, Panahi sets the experiment in motion.
A girl with her arm in a cast walks out of school, looking for her mother, who is usually there to pick her up. Mom is not present. The girl decides to find the way home on her own, but doesn't quite remember which way to go...

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.