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Offside

2006

Jafar Panahi

Sima Mobarak Shahi, Safar Samandar, Shayesteh Irani, M. Kheyrabadi ...

6.7

1,173

Comedy. Drama Who is that strange boy sitting quietly in the corner of a bus full of screaming fans going to the football match? In fact, this shy boy is a girl in disguise. She is not alone, women also love football in Iran. Before the game begins, she is arrested at the check point and put into a holding pen just by the stadium with a band of other women all dressed up as men. They will be handed over to the vice squad after the match. But before ... [+]

	Media	Author	Review
		Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"[A] likeable, gentle and charming film (...) With audacity and flair, Panahi filmed it at the actual stadium (...) Intelligent and humorous (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"Accessible and entertaining (...) Panahi becomes more of a master with every movie"
		Michael Koresky IndieWire	"Eloquent, invigorating, tightly paced, and endlessly enjoyable (...) A delicate yet trenchant social allegory"
		Noel Murray AV Club	"[It] contains the energy and tension of a major sporting even (...) A political film that makes the personal profound."
		Richard Brody The New Yorker	"Panahi’s unique and audacious technique alone, of a fiction snatched from the margins of public events, makes it an important work of art."
		Keith Uhlich Slant	"[It] doesn’t lack for striking images (...) Panahi is so concerned with a particular social problem (...) that he fatally neglects the cinema (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"
		Tom Dawson BBC	"A vibrant, bitter-sweet work (...) 'Offside' recalls the best work of Ken Loach, in that the humour and the social critique emerge from the predicaments of the characters (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Geoff Andrew Time Out	"The film isn’t as consistently funny as it might be (...) but there’s no denying its rough, rousing power or its relevance as an illuminating social document."
		Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly	"[A] wonderfully funny, outspoken shaggy-dog story"
		David Parkinson Radio Times	"[A] forthright, funny and fascinating satire (...) Superbly played by the non-professional cast (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"

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