Bettina_Hamilton-Irv writes:

The girl with the pretty face is quite unsuccessfully trying to pretend that she is a boy. She is wearing baggy clothes, a baseball cap and a look of terror on her face as she is approaching the check-point. She tries not to stand out too much between all the men, but her anxiety coupled with her feminine features give her away. Realising her cover is blown, she desperately tries to run away and escape in the crowd, but the security guards tackle her and she falls to the ground. Clearly, she must have committed a serious crime. Actually, she hasn’t. She’s just an Iranian girl trying to watch a game of soccer.

In his latest offering, controversial Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s shows us in a clever way that some of the little things we tend to take for granted here can be a big deal somewhere else. Offside is a somewhat unspectacular yet extraordinary movie about a group of rebellious Iranian girls who are so determined to watch the soccer World Cup qualifying game between Iran and Bahrain that they dress up as boys to try to enter the male-only stadium. The film - shot in a documentary-style and using only non-professional actors - is structured almost like a soccer match and runs just under ninety minutes. It tells the story of a few different Iranian girls, all disguised as boys, who are discovered and captured by security guards as they are trying to enter the sacred male ground that is a soccer stadium. They are then not sent home, but kept in a make-shift holding pen inside the stadium, forced to listen to the screams and excitement of the crowd, while not being able to see what’s going on. With Iran’s most important game in years unfolding right next to them, they are left with nothing more than the amateur-ish commentary of one of their guards. And they know, once the game is finished, they will be transported to the vice squad for punishment.

While Offside certainly draws attention to the position of women in Iran and makes us reflect on equality and the value of cultural or religious conventions, it seems a relatively tame approach to a powerful issue - until we find out more about the background of how the movie came together.

High-profile filmmaker Jafar Panahi knows what it’s like to be offside: It’s a position he has been in with his own government for many years. His films regularly win international awards but are banned from being screened in Iranian cinemas. Making a film is a struggle for Panahi, who often puts much more time and energy into trying to fight officials and censorship than he puts into the actual movie. But the battles and difficulties he faces and overcomes are also what causes his films to be hailed as triumphs.

In Iran, movie scripts first have to be approved by the Department of Islamic Guidance. Completed films then need to be modified again according to the direction of the censors before receiving permission to be released. To produce Offside, Panahi entered a false script and, due to his high profile, named one of his associates as the director of the film. Most of the film was then shot with the real World Cup qualifying game between Iran and Bahrain as a backdrop. He filmed the fan crowd arriving at the stadium, security guards at the game and the celebrations afterwards.

It isn't surprising that this illegally produced film was refused a screening permit in Iran. But Offside, which turned up in Iran in the form of pirated DVDs, did nevertheless have an impact on the country. Many women started to protest against the “law” passed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, which forbids women from watching live football matches. Following demonstrations, where women carried banners reading “We don’t want to be offside any more”, President Ahmadinejad lifted the ban on women attending public sporting events. Sadly, the positive change did not last long and was hurriedly vetoed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that Jafar Panahi has opened up a discourse and he can be expected to keep on producing controversial Iranian films. Seen through our Western eyes, Offside is not as contentious as one might think, but we need to view it in through an Iranian context and consider the cultural background to appreciate its entire value. It is a rather improvised and raw movie, whose beauty lies much more in its political power than in a sophisticated storyline. With its quiet intelligence, gentle humor and discreet but persistent social criticism, Offside is something of a still water that runs deep.


Offside
2005

Director: Jafar Panahi
Screenwriter: Jafar Panahi & Shadmehr Rastin
Cinematographer: Mahmoud Kalari
Editor: Jafar Panahi
Cast: Sima Mobarakshai, Safar Samandar, Shayesteh Irani, Mohamad Kheirabadi, Aida Sadeghi