No Bears
Janus Film | Release Date: December 23, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
92
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 28 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
89
Austin ChronicleJenny NulfFeb 9, 2023
Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s feminist views have consistently been at the center of his work, but his latest film, No Bears, is an ambitious, powerful piece that puts himself in the center of two narratives, parallel to each other, in which two generations of women are forced into difficult situations because traditions and laws have made it almost impossible for them to be with who they love. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonFeb 10, 2023
Panahi deftly juggles his stories, merging them together in the devastating final minutes of No Bears. Read full review
90
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJan 12, 2023
This extraordinary film, which, despite its tragic trappings, is often surprisingly playful, can be appreciated without knowing anything about Panahi or his long-term battles with the authoritarian regime. Read full review
100
CineVueChristopher MachellNov 11, 2022
Panahi’s courageousness as an agitator is matched only by his inventiveness as a filmmaker. Read full review
83
IndieWireSophie Monks KaufmanSep 14, 2022
Panahi is a director who has always mingled fact and fiction, and here the distinction is more addled than ever, so that by the time the final credits roll it’s not exactly clear what was staged and what was real. Read full review
80
Little White LiesRafaela Sales RossNov 11, 2022
The same ground that once bore the sturdy foundation of a loving home now stands eternally scarred by the searing cuts of imaginary lines, an irreparable fissure that – in Panahi’s heartfelt visual diary – cruelly severs the frail umbilical cord to the motherland. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriJan 13, 2023
While No Bears is profoundly powerful in its own right, the knowledge that its maker is incarcerated gives its explorations of exile, truth, and freedom a throat-catching urgency. Read full review
100
Original-CinLiam LaceyDec 21, 2022
At times, No Bears can come across as frustratingly convoluted, but Panahi is an artful filmmaker, who surprises us by breaking the rhythms of the film with disruptions, confrontations, and plot twists. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganJan 2, 2023
While 3 Faces explores the social position of women in Iran through oft-whimsical encounters as Panahi drives across northwestern Iran with actress Behnaz Jafari (also playing herself), No Bears feels much more darkly prophetic, seemingly aware of the filmmaker’s encroaching imprisonment. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyJan 1, 2023
No Bears is a picture that’s in keeping with his recent work—circumstances deemed that it just had to be—but one that breaks away from it in ways that yield a work of, yes, astonishment. Read full review
100
Rolling StoneDavid FearJan 1, 2023
You leave feeling like you’ve just seen a truly extraordinary late work produced by one of the era’s greatest working auteurs, quickly followed by the sense of experiencing a sucker punch when you remember that the man driving away from the scene of the crime onscreen isn’t able to go anywhere once that screen fades to black. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussJan 17, 2023
Like all his films of the last dozen years, “No Bears” brims with paranoia and metaphors for the trouble Panahi’s pictures have gotten him into. This time, though, he implicates himself in a complex exploration of how his work can exploit and even exacerbate the real-life tragedies it’s always so powerfully depicted. Read full review
100
Screen DailyJonathan RomneySep 14, 2022
A complex work of novelistic density, this is among the boldest and most accomplished statements from one of the world’s exemplary filmmakers. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineSam C. MacSep 14, 2022
No Bears generally spends less time finding aesthetic articulations of its themes than it does building out an increasingly convoluted plot to support them. Read full review
83
The Film StageDavid KatzSep 20, 2022
The director’s bravery and ingenuity—by continuing to create new work, advocate for himself, and also entertain us—remains an utterly inspiring thing. Read full review
91
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzDec 22, 2022
If watching a Jafar Panahi film is something of a political act, then it is also a soul-nourishing one. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawNov 11, 2022
Like Panahi’s recent films This Is Not a Film and Taxi Tehran, this is powerful because of its control, subtlety and diplomatic finesse. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 14, 2022
Panahi’s stoical presence at the center of all this is rattled, forcing him to contemplate the repercussions of his work both to himself and to even his most guileless collaborators. The sobering final image resonates with the unspoken cry of an artist exiled in his own homeland, saying, “Enough.” Read full review
90
The Irish TimesTara BradyNov 11, 2022
Defiant, endlessly resourceful and gripping cinema. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 23, 2022
Panahi, whose courage and honesty are beyond doubt, has made a movie that calls those very qualities into question, a movie about its own ethical limits and aesthetic contradictions. Read full review
90
The New YorkerRichard BrodyDec 21, 2022
There’s palpable joy in the sheer ingenuity of the movie’s conception and in the realization of it. Panahi goes at his subjects with an irrepressible cinematic verve that extends from the story and the dialogue to the performances and the very presences of the actors. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeJan 1, 2023
Filtering his immense contribution to cinema through a deceptively incidental lens, he once again reminds us that movie-making can be a profoundly humane endeavour; at once comedic, tragic and truthful. Read full review
100
The PlaylistElena LazicJan 1, 2023
Panahi does not paint himself and his practice in a kind or perfectly innocent light here. However, his ability to still clearly identify who the real culprits are is an inspiring testament to his clear-mindedness and his unshaken ability to imagine a better, more just world. Read full review
90
TheWrapBen CrollSep 14, 2022
If Panahi makes us understand Jafar, he also recognizes the rippling effect of his choices. Such is the dense and intricate layering of this deceptively simple film, which has a no-budget aesthetic and a novelistic sprawl. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekJan 1, 2023
In No Bears, the 62-year-old Panahi shows nothing more than the normal effects of aging: his hair is grayer than before, the lines in his face perhaps slightly more pronounced. But this is hardly a broken man. He knows one thing for sure: defiance is the ultimate act of survival. Read full review
80
Time OutGreer McNallyNov 10, 2022
Legendary Iranian director Jafar Panahi (Closed Curtain, Taxi Tehran) explores ideas of freedom, and what they mean to two very different couples in No Bears, his latest film about life in the homeland that currently has him cruelly incarcerated. Read full review
80
VarietyJessica KiangSep 14, 2022
If Panahi’s dissident films have to date been journeys of discovery about the subversively liberating, life-affirming power of cinema, No Bears is where he slams on the brakes. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayFeb 22, 2023
No Bears would be thoroughly engaging simply as a wryly funny fish-out-of-water story, with some diverting film-within-a-film metatext thrown in for thoughtful measure. But as Panahi’s stories mirror and merge, his deeper observations come into sobering and ultimately deeply moving focus. Read full review
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