All this for a 77-minute movie about a mild-mannered director wondering why he’s being hung out to dry. We see Panahi pace his apartment in frustration, talking to Mirtahmasb, to the camera, to us. It’s the Persian New Year, March 2011, and his wife and daughter are away visiting her mother. He feeds his pet iguana and talks a neighbor out of leaving her horrid little dog with him for an hour. The tsunami in Japan is on the news and there are New Year’s bonfires and fireworks in the street. They sound like gunshots.

There’s more to it than that, of course. “This Is Not a Film” may be one of the most eloquent blows against a dictatorship ever filmed because it forces you to think about everything that can’t be said and everything that’s just off-screen. Panahi digs out his most recent banned script and tries to block it out on his living room rug with masking tape. The story’s about an Iranian girl whose parents lock her in the house to prevent her from going to college, and the ironies are unspoken but obvious. He reads the dialogue and takes a stab at acting out the parts. “Acting and reading aren’t an offense, are they?” he asks, only partly in jest.

Yet the attempt collapses in despair. “If we could tell a film,” Panahi wonders aloud, “then why make a film?” He takes a call from his lawyer; the appeal looks iffy. (In October of last year, Panahi’s ban and six-year sentence were confirmed; he remains under house arrest and is trying to take the case to Iran’s Supreme Court.) Night falls and the explosions in the street pick up.