IRANIAN VACATION
Panah Panahi’s glorious debut is a true vehicle for his talent…
It can’t be easy to make your first feature when your father is one of your country’s most famous filmmakers. “I must say that it took me maybe 10 years, a whole decade, to finally take the plunge,” admits Panah Panahi over Zoom from his home in Iran. The son of Jafar Panahi, director of acclaimed films The White Balloon, The Circle and Taxi, had made shorts, but nothing more. “I never actually really felt confident enough in what I wrote, in the ideas I had.”
After showing some material to a friend of his father’s, it was the outline for Hit The Road that stood out. The story of a family on a road trip, it sees Khorso (Hassan Madjooni) and his wife (Pantea Panahiha) head towards the Turkish border on a mission to smuggle their 20-year-old son Farid (Amin Simiar) out of the country. Also along for the ride, their rambunctious younger son (Rayan Sarlak) and an ailing dog, in a journey that mixes pathos with a big dollop of humour.
“Leaving the country is something that happens a lot with many people of my generation,” says Panahi, noting that his fellow countrymen and women “hope for a better future” this way. “They feel that the only way they can reach this perspective is [by doing this].” There’s a further irony: Panahi’s own father was arrested in 2010 over the content of his films, sentenced to six years in prison and banned from making movies for 20 years. He’s still not allowed to leave the country even now.
Understandably, ideas of freedom and flight are buried in the subtext of Hit The Road. “It’s there,” nods Panahi. “But what’s very interesting… it was completely unconscious for me. Like many other aspects, it was really quite late, probably even after the shooting, that I realised [it]. But the whole process, writing and shooting, was something of a therapy for me.” Same goes for the fact it’s a road movie, something that only struck him after the film’s Q&A at the Cannes world premiere. “I realised, ‘Oh, yes, that’s probably what I did!’”
What he does manage is to elicit one of the great performances from a young child – Rayan Sarlak. “He was probably the third person that I auditioned. And I realised immediately that he was the kid I needed. He was extremely professional, extremely sensitive to the slightest comments or suggestions that I gave him. Every day I really felt that I was dealing with a genius.” Did he ever misbehave? “You cannot really expect a six-and-a-half hyperactive child to behave on a set! I must say that he misbehaved less than we expected!”
‘I realised immediately that he was the kid I needed’ PANAH PANAHI
HIT THE ROAD OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 29 JULY.