Although currently restricted by a 20-year ban on film-making, screenwriting and travelling outside Iran, the director Jafar Panahi remains one of the most intellectually inquisitive and agile voices in Iranian cinema. 3 Faces is the fourth unauthorised film that Panahi has made since the ban – he risks a six-year prison sentence each time he breaks it.

In this picture he uses a road trip to the mountain region in the northwest of Iran to interrogate both his country’s uneasy relationship with its cinema tradition and its enduringly patriarchal attitudes. But there’s humour here too. We meet a granny who has taken up residence in her pre-bought grave and other colourful characters.

The “three faces” of the title represent three film-making generations: Behnaz Jafari, playing herself, is a famous actor in television and film who is troubled by a video message from a suicidal girl whose acting dreams have been crushed. Marziyeh Rezaei is the girl in question, whose family would rather she married than acted. And Shahrzad, a huge star from the 1960s and 70s who was banished after the revolution, is present as a voice rather than a face in the film, but is no less significant for the fact that she is not seen by the camera.