painters, above, and also symmetries in Kiarostami films such as Certified Copy.)


Though strikingly clever, and unique in the annals of Iranian chimeric/self-reflexive films, The Mirror notably lacks the element of authorial intentionality that is so important to both Close-Up and A Moment of Innocence. In its implications, it is more passive where they are active. Yet it would be the last such film


Panahi made. From his next film, The Circle (2000), on, Panahi seemed to come out of Kiarostami’s shadow. When he did, his engagement with Iranian society became much more overtly political, with the results that his subsequent films were banned in Iran and he was arrested in the wake of the 2009 post-election protests. Unlike Makhmalbaf, though, he has not elected to leave Iran but has remained there, making films that have to be smuggled out of the country.


26


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