Abstract

There is a fine balance between a veil which hides the deceitful communication strategy and a meaningful strategy. Camouflage is never a mere imitation according to Roger Caillois. Panah Panahi continues the strategies of camouflage his renowned father Jafar Panahi put in place, as an act of resistance and resilience in Iran, working within a strait jacket and under the veil of darkness. How does one free themself from ‘the name of their father’? If not by accepting the heritage, yet offering a new version of this camouflage? Shifting the political road movie or candid child topoi to a more existential semi-autobiographical exploration of sociological camouflages such as the polite etiquette known in farsi as taarof, “Hit the road”(2022)  suggests more than revels the many lies, cheatings, disguises, hidings, self-effacements resulting from the Iranian contemporary society in which alluding is an act of survival.
In such absurd context, how should the new generation continue to act and react? Is “Hit the Road” resulting from the same cinematic taarof based on allegory, parables from his father’s first films, or based on radical intellectual parody from his latest films? Can Panah Panahi reconciliate both strategies to offer a new type of film built on the camouflage strategy itself? Can the cinematic disguise of camouflage acting as the art of trompe-l’oeil continue to be a source of creative resilience and resistance for the new generation of Iranians?