Jafar Panahi: Where Fiction Meets Documentary

In Taxi Tehran, the dashboard camera appears to record passengers as they travel through the city. Yet everything reaches us through a frame and an edit. The line between documentary and fiction matters here, but not as a guessing game about which people are “real”.

For the third session of our Jafar Panahi month, Sammy Holden will return to selected extracts from the film and examine how the fixed camera creates credibility. We will consider what the film presents as evidence, what has been shaped through performance or editing and what the viewer has no way of verifying.

Working in small groups, we will use a supplied fictional scenario to develop a six-beat scene that combines observed and constructed material. Before building the scene, each group will separate what is known, what has been invented and what should remain withheld.

We will then review who carries the risk within the…