Crimson Gold

Jafar Panahi, alongside another veteran from Iranian film, Abbas Kiarostami, picked up this Dostojevskij-esque story about the goldsmith robber Hussein from a newspaper. Panahi's fascination with the case triggered a series of ideas that led to the creation of the film Crimson Gold:

"Abbas Kiarostami told me about a story he had read about in the news, a thief who was imprisoned by the security team when trying to rob a jewelry store. He ended up killing the owner, and later on himself. I was obsessed with this story, and asked myself what would make a man do something so extreme. When following this up, Kiarostami wrote the script with the idea that I should "open" a film with this story – by attempting to locate and track the events that led to the tragedy."

Jafar Panahi is one of the leading contemporary Iranian filmmakers, winning wide-ranging international recognition and numerious prizes from major festivals for his films The White Balloon (1995), The Circle (2000) and Offside (2006). His films combine neorealist esthetics with biting humour and social commentary, with notable focus on the situation of Iranian women. Despite being banned from filmmaking by Iranian authorities since 2010 and living under house arrest for periods of time, he has continued making and distributing films. His latest film Taxi (2015), shot under clandestine conditions in Teheran, won him the Golden Bear at the Berlinale film festival.