Taxi(2015)
dir. Jafar Panahi
A banned director, a taxi, and a dashboard camera.
Where to watch: Free on Kanopy (library card) and Hoopla; Kino Film Collection $5.99/mo; rent $3.99 Apple TV, $2.99 Fandango At Home (JustWatch US, Oct 2026)Letterboxd ↗
Panahi was banned by the Iranian government from making films, so he drives a Tehran cab with a camera on the dashboard and lets the passengers talk. A vendor of pirated DVDs, a lawyer, a woman with a bouquet and his own young niece all climb in, and some of it is staged. It is funny, quick and quietly defiant.
Why it’s here
The film is a ban turned into a form: a director who can't work in a studio makes a film in a cab. What's punk is the refusal to stop. What's pedagogical is that it asks what's real in a documentary, and who decides. A close relative of It Was Just an Accident, already in the catalog, with the same director. Panahi was imprisoned over his work and the film is part of why.
Where This Film Lives
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