It’s strange to think that barely weeks after Jafar Panahi announced that he would be returning to Iran after completing the awards circuit for this film despite knowing that he will certainly be arrested that the current war broke out. The director has always a critic of the regime yet in tackling the subject of torture head-on here, he is at his harshest yet. Through the dialogue of the victims, he exposes not just details of what the torture was like but also what he himself would want to say to those responsible. I’m not sure if this is his best film but it certainly is the hardest hitting one and fully deserves the acclaim that it has won.

While travelling at night, a man, his wife and his daughter develop car trouble. They stop at a nearby garage to get it fixed but the mechanic there Vahid seemingly recognizes the man who has a distinctive prosthetic leg. Vahid secretly follows the family back to their home and continues surveillance of the man in a van the next day. When he spots an opportunity, he knocks the man out and takes him to the desert with the intention of burying him. Vahid accuses him of being Eghbal, a enforcer for the regime who tortured him when he was imprisoned some years ago. The man vehemently denies the accusation and Vahid is unable to be certain as he and the other prisoners were blindfolded at the time. He locks the man in a box and takes him to his friend Salar who was also a prisoner. Salar refuses to participate but directs him to other former prisoners including a woman photographer Shiva, an engage couple she happens to taking wedding photos of whom the woman Goli was also a victim, and Hamid, a hot-headed man who was once Salar’s partner.

I’d already read about the premise beforehand and no doubt many others have as well. So the initial accident of the man’s family at night serves both as an intentional misdirection and to demonstrate to the audience that the presumed torturer is also just a man with a family of his own. Along with the colorful variety of victims who eventually join Vahid in ferrying the torturer around in his van, there’s a frantic, at times even comedic, energy here despite the very sombre subject matter. I note too that Panahi seems to have taken a liking to shooting scenes shot from inside moving vehicles as he resorts to it so often. It does add dynamism to the film while emphasizing the bizarreness of Vahid carrying out his very illegal scheme of revenge as ordinary life goes on in the city. There’s a sense of tension and danger that we don’t usually see in Panahi’s films as the stakes here are literally life and death. It’s so like him to include a scene in which they are challenged by two policemen only to realize that all that they want is a bribe.

The core of the film, asserting that the regime absolutely does torture ordinary Iranians, is unquestionably powerful. It spells out in no uncertain terms that the torture entails both physical beatings and systematic humiliation designed to break the victim’s mind. Goli describes how she was strung up to be hanged and left there for three hours only to be told that she would have to be deflowered first to prevent her from ascending to heaven after death. All of the victims have had their lives permanently ruined in different ways so we can very much understand why they’re so bloodthirsty for vengeance. Of course this being Panahi, he also wants to show that the people as a whole are morally superior by showing mercy. I think the denouement is a little too neat, amounting to wishful thinking on the part of the director. But this is after all a revenge fantasy so he gets to specify exactly what he wants.

I hesitate to call this Panahi’s best film because it has all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer. This is Panahi at his rawest and angriest, unbridled in his contempt for the ruling regime and fully aware of the consequences for making it. The two actresses here even disdain the veil, with Shiva only putting it on while buying something at the pharmacy. I wouldn’t call it my favorite because I generally prefer something a little more elegant but I can understand why this was the film that finally won him the Palme d’Or at Cannes.