Smuggled out of Iran in a cake for its world premiere at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, this self-declared non-film (call it a reality show) captures Iranian director Panahi (THE CIRCLE, OFFSIDE) in sly passive-resistance defiance of the authorities that have shackled him with a six-year prison term and a 20-year ban on filmmaking.

With the help of documentary filmmaker Mirtahmasb and consumer-grade cameras, Panahi becomes the artist-alchemist who converts the long hours of his house arrest into an arresting cinema of the mind plotted out in words and gestures in his living room. The film’s finale, set on the night of Persian New Year’s Eve, is breathtaking in its resonance. In Persian with English subtitles. HDCAM video. (BS)

Click here to view a trailer, purchase tickets, and learn more about the film.

A panel discussion follows the 6:00 pm screening on Sunday,moderated by Steve Bynum, senior producer of Worldview on WBEZ 91.5, and including Prof. Hamid Naficy of Northwestern University, author of the four-volume A Social History of Iranian Cinema, and Milos Stehlik, founder/director of Facets Multimedia, and a regular commentator on film on Worldview.