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I FIRST MET Jafar Panahi in 1993, when he served as Abbas Kiarostami's first assistant director on Through the Olive Trees. Panahi, who also acted in several scenes in the film, impressed Kiarostami with his hard work, interest and discipline. Subsequently Kiarostami developed a story by Panahi into a script called The White Balloon, which became Panahi's feature directing debut. One of the discoveries of Cannes 95, where it received the Camera d'Or and the FIPRESCI jury prize, The White Balloon went on to screen in 66 film festivals around the world and win eleven more awards. The universally appealing story of a little girl who wants to buy a goldfish on the eve of the Iranian New Year, and her efforts to recover her money after she loses it, attracted distributors all over the world and paved the way for Iranian movies in the international market, especially in the U.S. In spite of opposition from the Iranian authorities, it was Iran's entry for the 1996 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Panahi's second film, The Mirror, which he wrote himself, took a new direction, although his social concerns remained intact. Once again the protagonist is a little girl, who this time has to make her way home alone when her mother fails to pick her up from school. The film takes a different perspective on a child's encounter with the city and its inhabitants - until the actress playing the girl suddenly rebels against the film crew and her demanding working conditions. If The Mirror descends into a film within a film, a technique used by a number of Iranian filmmakers, Panahi shrewdly leaves the girl alone and then follows her home, in the process giving us an...