TEHRAN Taxi is the title of the next movie to be shown by Keighley Film Club at the Picture House.

The 82-minute film is described as a “comedy docu-fiction” created by anonymous actors assembled to reflect different strands of life in Iran.

It raises a range of contemporary issues that Iranians are not permitted to debate in public, but still speak about in the confines of a taxi.

Film Club spokesman Alan Watkinson said: “Iran is very much a closed society to Western audiences where the public are not allowed to criticise the government.

“There are strict laws that are punishable by punitive imprisonments for trivial misdemeanors.

“This film allows us to glimpse another culture so different from our own but are we free? We should not feel too complacent as the treatment of Edward Snowdon and Julian Assange in the West reveals.”

Tehran Taxi was made by film director Jafar Panahi, who was given a 20-year ban by the government in 2010 for allegedly promoting propaganda films against goverment policy.

He has since made This Is Not A Film and Closed Curtain in defiance of the ban.

Panahi then thought of becoming a taxi driver and using actors as passengers to portray Iranian city life whilst debating issues like the death penalty, male inheritance of property, gender exclusion in sport, government-censored films and political prisoners.

He is director, writer, cinematographer, editor and one of the lead actors, but the show is stolen by his niece Hana Saedi in demonstrating to the government via her school project what is permissable in film.

Alan said: “Faced with over whelming odds in real life, Panahi’s film demonstrates the tenacity of human spirit, exposing the contradiction of censorship, the emergence of a black market and the challenge of freedom of expression."

In the film, Panahi travels openly through Tehran streets collecting various passengers who express their opinions.

Contradictions are exposed, and the passengers’ experiences give a fine balance between comical aspects of Iranian life and a need for self expression.

Alan added: “This film presents a sobering yet seductive, thought-provoking, very rarely used at the lower yet probing glance into modern-day Iran.

The movie was filmed with several fixed cameras inside the taxi and other cameras held by the actors.

Tenran Taxi will be screened at Keighley Picture House on Sunday May 15 at 6pm. Doors open at 5.35pm. Anyone wishing in helping the film club should speak to committee members in red T-shirts.