PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST AS A DESPERATE MAN (THIS IS NOT A FILM)

A couple of weeks ago, Asghar Farhadi's 'A Separation' became the first Iranian movie to scoop the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

It was a remarkable achievement - especially at a time of great diplomatic tension between Iran and the United States over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Farhadi's terrific movie deserved this honour but in truth, it will only ever play to niche audiences in the west and will struggle to engage audiences in middle America, middle England or middle Ireland.

That shouldn't, however, diminish its achievement and particularly the significance of its Oscar victory for Iranian cinema. Iranian filmmakers have played an important role in helping Western film buffs go beyond the news bulletins and understand what life is really like in their country.

Over the past two decades, in particular, the country's best movies have packed a strong punch, as anyone who has seen Samira Makhmalbaf's remarkable 1998 docudrama 'The Apple' can testify.

Makmalbaf's film focussed on a Tehran family who hit the headlines after the husband and his blind wife were reported to the authorities for locking their twin daughters inside their house for 12 years. It's genius was using the real family to re-enact real life events.

Abbas Kiarostami's 'Ten' in 2002 was another high watermark, featuring a middle class woman and the conversations she has with 10 people in her car as she drives through Tehran. These range from her son to a jilted bride to a prostitute to a woman on her way to pray. 

And then there is the work of Jafar Panahi whose movies 'The White Balloon', 'The Circle' and 'Offside' have shone a sharp light on the struggle of women in Iran's male dominated society.

What makes these movies incredible is the huge restrictions imposed on Iran's filmmakers over the years. If a director wants to bring his or her vision to the screen, he or she must submit a script to a committee and if it approves the screenplay, a certificate is awarded that enables the movie to go into production.

Asghar Farhadi explained to Time Out in January: "Unless you’re trying to make a movie on the sly, there’s no way to get around this. If you want to use public spaces, film on the streets, have the co-operation of the police, you have to have a permit."

He added: "Iranian filmmakers are not passive. They fight whenever they can, as creative expression means a lot to them. The restrictions and censorship in Iran are a bit like the British weather: one day it’s sunny, the next day it’s raining. You just have to hope you walk out into the sunshine."

Unfortunately Jafar Panahi, it seems, has fallen victim to a heavy downpour.

An outspoken supporter of the pro-democracy Green Movement, which protested against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad following the 2009 Presidential election, the director was arrested twice and had a movie shut down while in production.

The 51 year old was subsequently handed a six year jail sentence by the Revolutionary Court and a 20 year ban on making or directing any movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media as well as leaving the country.

His plight was highlighted by the French actress Juliette Binoche at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival who carried a sign bearing his name and then by Isabella Rossellini who did likewise at the Berlin Festival.

A petition demanding Panahi's release was organised by Amnesty International and a letter of support was signed by leading directors and actors including Francis Coppola, Jim Jarmusch, Robert de Niro, Robert Redford, Ang Lee, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Joel and Ethan Coen, Terrence Malick, Oliver Stone and Michael Moore.

However Panahi has not been content to meekly stand by and hope international pressure will change Tehran's mind. Undeterred by the restrictions imposed on him, he has made a documentary about his plight with the help of filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmsab. 

Cheekily called 'This is Not A Film', it was smuggled out of Iran to last year's Cannes Film Festival in a USB stick hidden inside a cake.

It is also one of the bravest pieces of cinema you are ever likely to see.

The documentary begins with Panahi eating breakfast in his comfortable apartment, having a guarded conversation on his iPhone with Mirtahmsab. That is followed by an answering machine message from his wife and another phone call with his lawyer to discuss his legal appeal.

The prognosis is not good. The lawyer informs him that he will do well to get his jail sentence reduced and the restrictions eased.

When Mirtahmsab arrives, it is clear Panahi is going a little stir crazy and he will not be muzzled. Instead of abiding by the restrictions imposed on him, he seeks to re-enact for the camera on the living room carpet scenes from the screenplay he was planning to film.

However he is frustrated by the limitations this imposes on him and as the documentary progresses, he struggles with the straitjacket imposed on him by the Revolutionary Court and his desire as an artist to get to the truth.

'This is Not A Film' is both an act of defiance and an act of desperation.

Panahi and Mirtahmsab are determined to give international audiences a sense of the huge restrictions imposed on Iran's storytellers but the movie is also a reflection on the art of filmmaking itself.

The director interrupts his re-enactment to reflect on his own work and the magic of capturing something truthful on camera. 

However the film is not as self-conscious or po faced as some of Jean Luc Godard's meditations on cinema and it is peppered with good humoured banter between Panahi, his co-director, his pet iguana Igi and the neighbours in the apartment block where he lives.

Where it really scores is its glimpses of middle class Iranian life - the arrival of a neighbour looking for Panahi to look after her pet dog, a conversation with a university student looking to take out the trash, the director struggling to surf a heavily censored Internet, the sound of fireworks in the streets outside, a shot of Igi climbing a bookcase.

Panahi's desire to film is instinctive as he plays not just with the DV camera but the iPhone.

'This Is Not A Film' deserves to be seen a wider audience - not least because Mirtahmsab was also arrested for espionage shortly before the film's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and jailed for three months.

It should be seen by a Western audience eager to learn more about a society we know very little about.

But it is also a portrait of an artist as a desperate man - an extremely courageous one, at that, as the final sequence of the film starkly demonstrates.

'This Is Not A Film' opened at the Queen's Film Theatre on April 6, 2012 and is playing in arthouse cinemas across the UK and Ireland.