Jafar Panahi Picks Just One Film in the Criterion Closet

When filmmakers visit the Criterion Closet, they’re encouraged to grab whatever they want. There’s no strict limit, and many people leave with stacks of Blu-rays. Not Jafar Panahi.

When I saw on my YouTube feed that a video had been uploaded of Panahi entering the closet, I predicted he would pick “Bicycle Thieves” off the shelf — it’s a film that perfectly encapsulates his cinema. What I didn’t predict was that it would be the only title he would pick. Sometimes one movie is all you need.

This decision, to only pick a single title, aligns well with Panahi’s films — simple, poignant, and poetic. Will he be able to get it through Iranian customs? It’s quite possible that once awards season is over and Panahi has to return to Iran, where he is set to be arrested for directing “It Was Just An Accident,” it will be a very different country than the one he had left. That’s the hope.

I see “Bicycle Thieves” here. I want to take this one. This one film had a major impact on my cinema. It was when I saw this film that I knew what I wanted to pursue, what type of films I was after. It opened my path to social cinema. In fact, my film, “The Circle,” could be just like it, in a way […] I projected the same thing in “The Circle,” in a different form, where the news of a child’s birth is shown through a window that opens, and that window in the prison then gets shut. The scene repeats in a way, and it seems as if it’s impossible to get out of that circle. Of course, my society’s conditions have been such that you really set out from a place only to circle back to it, as if there’s no way out. In my latest film, “It Was Just an Accident,” it’s as if you can step out — the circle is breakable. My film has more of that hope. Anyway, this is the film I’m choosing. I already have a copy at home, but given this occasion, I’m taking this one with me.