Five young Iranian women with a passion for the country’s soccer program need support from military-minded figures to avoid retaliation, all against the backdrop of a World Cup qualifying match.
It sounds a lot like what President Donald Trump just did by pressuring the Australian prime minister to grant asylum to five members of Iran’s women’s World Cup team. But it’s also very much a log-in SneakingJafar Panahi’s classic Persian-language football-themed film that debuted in Berlin 20 years ago last month and which paved the way for its current powerhouse. It was just an accident.
Given that his taste in films differs from Berlinale favorites, it is unlikely that Trump has seen the one-time Silver Bear winner. but Sneaking However, it offers a bizarre prediction of what happened in real time this week.
In Jawhara Panahi’s Dissident, five young women defy Iran’s ban on women attending sporting events by dressing as men and attempting to sneak into Tehran’s Azadi Stadium to take part in a World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain in 2005. Their efforts are largely thwarted as they are detained by military figures in a pen in an outdoor arena during the match instead, awaiting arrest. (Panahi shot the film largely, without state permission, at the same game.)
Throughout the film, as they quietly protest that they should be allowed in, the women are demonized by the military figures who detain them. “Come in, stop making trouble,” an officer says as the women are wrongly ushered into a holding pen before being arrested and referred to the vice squad. “Stop clowning around” and “keep your heads down,” says one of the leaders as they are escorted to a minibus for arrest for the simple crime of attending a football match.
These comments were chillingly reflected in statements on Islamic Republic of Iran Radio, where after the five young women last week refused to sing the national anthem at an Asian Cup World Cup qualifier in Australia, a state media broadcaster said that “anyone who takes a step against the country under wartime conditions should be dealt with more severely.” Broadcaster Mohammad Reza Shahbazi also described women as “traitors in times of war.”
Meanwhile, after last week’s game, the players were ushered in through the back doors to avoid possible targeting by the Iranian authorities, an image that has some similarities to the heroines of Panahi’s film who try to sneak onto the field and blend in to avoid being targeted by the Iranian authorities.
And perhaps most importantly, Sneaking It raises questions about the impact of strict and outdated government restrictions on young women who want to exercise the most basic right to civil expression.
As it turns out, so did Trump.
“Australia is committing a grave humanitarian error by allowing the Iranian women’s national soccer team to return to Iran, where they will likely be killed,” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday. Addressing Australian leader Anthony Albanese, Trump said: “Don’t do that, Mr. Prime Minister, give them asylum. The United States will take them in if you don’t do that.” Sunburnt Country would end up granting the five players asylum, in a move that may or may not have already been initiated by that government, but was almost certainly precipitated by Trump’s comments.
Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has witnessed tension between freedom of expression and state media in public areas such as art and sports, which the regime heavily oversees. For example, only pro-mullahs’ “state projects” are sanctioned by the government, while those making other types of films can be suspended, imprisoned, or worse.
Panahi has been a keen observer and courageous documenter of this tension, beginning with his third narrative film, 2000’s Critique of Feminism. circle, And reach a new peak with Sneaking After half a decade. (He had previously directed two lesser political films, including the award-winning Caméra d’Or White balloon in 1995.) Sneaking to make Hollywood Reporter A recent list of the best sports movies of all time at No. 14 (“It may be one of the best movies ever about the passion of fans and how the love of the game can conquer all… even the oppression of the patriarchy”). A Sony Classic release was also released last summer Rolling StoneList of the 100 best films of the 21st century Pain locker and Winter bone.
Which Sneaking Therefore, anticipating current realities is not surprising. Still, the idea of many of these themes now unfolding in the headlines will be startling to anyone familiar with Panahi’s work, and perhaps just further evidence of his dominance of foreign-language film conversations this Oscar season. incidentabout another way to confront the regime, was a contender in both the screenplay and international categories for the Oscars on Sunday and could get a boost from current events. (He has been promoting his vision of art in Iran on platforms such as Daily show.) The film is more prophetic in showing young women’s soccer patriotism even in the face of impending state punishment — an unwavering love for the very country that treats them so cruelly. This same sentiment is reflected in current protesters and freedom fighters, who embrace Iran’s ideal even as its reality continues to punish them.
Azadi Stadium was built during the Shah’s reign and was originally called Aryamehr before the regime renamed it after the revolution, and the film gives a greater sense of what has been lost since 1979. Women in the lobby at Sneaking They are surrealistically forced to rely on second-hand reports of the game just as many Iranians themselves have become strangely detached from the place they occupy, hearing reports of something that was once theirs and yet seems so far away.
While at the end Sneaking The team is victorious and the women are happy—“The soldier has to dance!” says one excited fan as they board the detention bus and usher everyone into a massive street party in Tehran—the young women are never officially allowed into the stands to watch the match, and for all its momentary joy, the film ends under an uncertain cloud over what they might ultimately endure in their homeland. In this sense, too, the film reflects reality – Trump and Albanese, like the film’s liberal fan, give real-life female soccer players a temporary respite even as their and their families’ long-term futures in Iran look far from bright.
