No Bears(خرس نیست)

TheWrap by Ben Croll

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.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

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.”

Variety by Jessica Kiang

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.

Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney

A complex work of novelistic density, this is among the boldest and most accomplished statements from one of the world’s exemplary filmmakers.

Slant Magazine by Sam C. Mac

No Bears generally spends less time finding aesthetic articulations of its themes than it does building out an increasingly convoluted plot to support them.

IndieWire by Sophie Monks Kaufman

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.