Filmmaker Jafar Panahi (“The White Balloon” and “Offside” are among films of his I’ve seen) has been under house arrest in his beautiful spacious, upper-middle class, modern, well-appointed, multi-story Tehran apartment for months awaiting a verdict by the appeals court for his conviction for political subversion carrying a 6-year prison sentence and 20 year ban on filmmaking and exiting the country. He is not living in either isolation or privation at the moment but he is caged within this extended space, shared with family and their large iguana, Igi. This creative, courageous, insightful, moving, sometimes slow film from 2011 depicts his day from rising, making breakfast, talking to his attorney, the neighbor with her yappy dog, the custodian (or is he a security agent?). It is Fireworks Day, a traditional day of explosions denounced by Iran’s leadership as subversive and anti-Islamic that is being co-opted by opponents of the regime. Tehran is exploding and he’s locked inside. And all becomes more as the day goes on. You feel his pain, his fear, his rage and sense of powerlessness as well as a beautiful sense of sly irony and courage By depicting a day in his life, Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb try to portray the deprivations looming in contemporary Iranian society. It’s not clear what’s real and spontaneous and what’s planned and improved or even scripted and acted. Parts are filmed on his cell phone, other parts are shot with a camera, and of course, all natural lighting. His reading from an unproduced screenplay about a girl held by her family against her will but written, purportedly, before his arrest, is deeply moving. Premiered at Cannes but he couldn’t get out of the country. See this film.