The brilliant Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was to appear at Queens’ Museum of the Moving Image next week to accompany a preview screening of his superlative Offside, an exquisitely pared down study in the art of mixing polemic with crowd-pleaser, has had to cancel his appearance, as the United States government has, naturally, rescinded his travel visa. Of course, this is hardly the first time that the U.S. has denied admittance to a middle-Eastern filmmaker—I can recall a whole slew of cancelled Q&As at the New York Film Festivals immediately (and not so immediately) following 9/11. Pretty ominous stuff, and especially troubling considering that this terrific film dramatizes the rumblings of the sorts of internal social change and progressive attitudes that many in the U.S. government would like to deny are happening today within the country’s youth generation. Hopefully, we’ll get to sit and have a talk with this fine filmmaker one day soon—as evidenced from this film, as well as his brilliant The Mirror, The Circle and Crimson Gold, he certainly has a lot to teach us.