Hollywood's Take on Iran

From the NYTimes:

Of all the filmmakers whose work is in the 63rd Cannes Film Festival...none have had the impact of the man who could not attend. Jafar Panahi is an Iranian director who was asked to join the competition jury, but is currently in a jail in his country for his political views. On Tuesday, a message from him in which he asked to contact his family and speak with a lawyer, was posted on the Web site of the French journal La Règle du Jeu (laregledujeu.org).

“My final wish is that my remains be returned to my family, so that they may bury me in the place they choose.”

The gravity of Mr. Panahi’s statement only underscored the real and often calamitous world events that have informed a number of the films here, with selections touching on the American war in Iraq, the global financial crisis, religious fundamentalism, armed revolutionary struggles and the usual man’s inhumanity against man, women and children.

At a Thursday afternoon press conference, an Iranian journalist asked the director Doug Liman — who’s here with “Fair Game,” about the former C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson — what he thought about the belief that the United States might soon lead an attack on Iran. The slightly surprised-looking Mr. Liman [his father, Arthur L. Liman, served as the chief counsel to the Senate committee that investigated the Iran-Contra affair, the arms-for-hostages scandal that blew up in the Reagan years] paused and then answered that, in contrast to the real Ms. Plame, he is not “a nuclear proliferation expert.” Next question.