Today, I met Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director of The White Balloon, The Mirror, The Circle, and Crimson Gold. His new film, Offside, is about young Iranian girls who have to disguise themselves as boys to attend soccer games (from which women are banned). Panahi is arguably the Iranian filmmaker most critical of the social policies of the Iranian government, and his last three films have all been banned in Iran as a result. He is also the Iranian filmmaker most critical of the social policies of the U.S. government, and has refused, in the wake of post-9/11 legislation, to allow himself to be fingerprinted as a precondition for entering the country. Consequently, he has declined all film festival invitations to visit the U.S.

We are exactly the same age. His English isn't very good, and my Persian is even worse, so we communicated by means of a translator (note to self: learn Persian). But it was fascinating to hear him talk about the difficulties Iranian directors have in trying to get their films past the censors, and it made me appreciate the straightforwardness of the American system in which the rules are at least democratic and clear: only films that are commercially viable will be greenlit. In Iran, the rules are much more nebulous, and open to the vagaries and whims of bureaucrats and clerics.

The irony here is that the international interest in films from Iran (and especially banned ones) translates into a kind of commercial viability, whereas independent American films that eschew blatant commercialism are invariably relegated to a lower rung on the hierarchical ladder of cinematic esteem. Panahi, a director of international repute, was arguably the Wellington Film Festival's most famous guest, and his films are profitable enough to allow him to finance them himself, despite the fact that his last three films have all been banned in his own country. I couldn't help wishing that my films had been banned as well.