The Douglas Sirk Prize
by Becky Tan

Winner of the 2018 Douglas Sirk Prize was Jafar Panahi from Iran. Panahi is probably Iran’s most successful film director, having won festival prizes in Berlin (Taxi), Locarno (The Mirror), and Venice (The Circle). Presently his creative efforts are hindered by restraining government decisions which forbid him to leave Iran, as well as being prohibited to make films in general, something which he has successfully worked around, as proven in his newest DREI GESICHTER (3 Faces), which showed at the Filmfest Hamburg.

The Douglas Sirk Prize has been awarded every year since 1995, when it went to Clint Eastwood. Since then other talented filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch (1999), Isabelle Huppert (2003), and Tilde Swinton (2013), to name few, have been honored. Because Panahi could not leave his native country, his daughter Solmaz Panahi came in from her home in Paris to accept the prize for him. He thanked the audience via a videotape. Solmaz was accompanied by actress Behnaz Jafari, who played a lead role in 3 FACES, which then showed after the award ceremony. Panahi received the award for his complete work since 1995, when he first gained recognition with The White Balloon.

This was not an award specifically for the film 3 FACES, which, although interesting considering the difficult conditions for filming, is not one of his best. Here Jafar Panahi and actress Behnaz Jafari play themselves in a road movie, which requires close-ups of them sitting in a car. Jafari has received a mysterious video in which a young girl, Maedeh, (Maedeh Erteghael) pleads for help. Supposedly, she is attending a Tehran drama school. But is she committing suicide? Hanging from a tree? Or is this an enacted school drama? Panahi and Jafari jump into the car and use up the rest of the film’s 100 minutes to converse, talk with people along the way (often in Turkish, since this is the language of the area) and show us beautiful Iranian landscapes. The best scenes portrayed typical Iranian customs. For example, we learn that it is dishonorable for a young girl to strive for an acting career. Or a young boy who goes to university, first cuts off his foreskin, which is then buried on the university campus in order that he become successful. The university campus gardens are full of foreskins of young men, who strive to become doctors or engineers.