Two directors from countries with tough film censorship brought bold and probing movies to the Cannes Film Festival today, one exploring China's social problems, the other delving into the mysteries of the human heart.
Jia Zhangke's "A Touch of Sin" depicts facets of fast-changing China that the government prefers to avoid: corruption, greed, violent crime and the growing gap between economic winners and losers.
"The Past," by Academy Award-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, is an unsparing tale of domestic upheaval, set in and around Paris and made with a largely French cast.
Both films are competing for Cannes' top prize, the Palme d'Or and both have been cleared for release in their homelands, where filmmakers often fall foul of restrictions.
Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has approved "The Past" for screening, and "A Touch of Sin" is due to open in China in the fall.
The two directors are pleased their films will be seen at home, but they gave very different descriptions of working in settings where official censorship is an everyday reality.
"I'm someone who is deeply attached to my creative freedom, and I always do my utmost to ensure I don't indulge in any form of self-censorship," said Jia, who has explored China's rapid transformation throughout his career from early underground films such as "Unknown Pleasures" to documentaries to the Venice Film Festival prize-winning 2006 feature "Still Life."
Farhadi, though, said the effect of censorship was more insidious.
"One can try to free oneself of the past, but the past doesn't let you do that," he said both a theme of "The Past" and an observation of his own situation.
"There are two kinds of censorship," he told reporters. "You have official censorship which works in a certain way. But there is also self-censorship. You impose it on your innermost self."
Iran's authorities have long had an uneasy relationship with the country's filmmakers, and influential clerics have often denounced the domestic cinema as dominated by Western-tainted liberals and political dissenters. Some directors and actors have faced arrest or fled the country.
