Scott writes that “the first two pictures were from the side of a dirt road about 10km northwest of San Pedro de Atacama. A couple friends and I were biking out to Tulor, the site of the oldest excavated village in the region, when we accidentally rode onto the set of a German movie being filmed about a German man who falls in love with an indigenous woman. After being yelled at, we went back and stopped on the side of the road to wait for them to stop filming. Right alongside the road was this soccer field with wooden goals and chalked out lines, missing only nets and (obviously) grass.”

Scott continues, telling me that the next few pictures “were from a small town 30-something kilometers southeast of San Pedro called Toconao. It’s a small indigenous community with a population of approximately 500. A few of us arrived in Toconao as part of a tour of the region and walked around for a half hour. First thing we noticed was that many of the shops and restaurants seemed to be closing, despite the fact it was noon. We soon realized why: the town’s girls soccer team had a game against a rival from a nearby town. It’s not entirely evident in the photos, but it seemed as if at least half the town was out to watch the game. Toconao (the team with blue and white jerseys) had crisp, clean, matching uniforms, not to mention nets on their goals while their opponents just had matching jerseys and many played in pants instead of shorts. Toconao was winning 1-0 when we left.”

Of the last pictures, Scott writes that they are “of a soccer field on the outskirts of San Pedro itself. It seemed to be affiliated with a local school because they were right next to each other. Again, a sandy field with big rocks in it for some reason, but these goals were metal frames instead of wooden rectangles, though they also lacked nets. Perhaps someone puts up the nets when there’s a game to be played.”

Do you have any pictures of soccer fields from out of the way places? I’d love to publish them here. Perhaps it could even be a regular feature. Email me with ideas or pictures at david [at] cultureofsoccer [dot] com.

Panahi knew that taking on the subject of female football fans in Iran would be controversial, and so tried to make his movie quietly so as to avoid the censors. In an interview, he described how even his best attempts to avoid notice were ultimately unsuccessful.

We tried to be very discreet and avoid any mention in the press. However, five days before the end of the shoot, a newspaper published an article stating I was directing a new film. The military immediately gave orders to interrupt the shoot. We were instructed to bring them our rushes to be verified. I immediately announced to the official in charge of cinema in Iran that this was out of the question, and that I would not allow a single soldier during the final days of the shoot. Luckily, there were only a few scenes left to shoot, inside a minibus, so we just left the military zone and continued filming sixty kilometers outside of Tehran.

But the difficulties Panahi faced from overzealous authorities is nothing compared to those encountered by the subjects of his movie. They are the female football fans who so desperately want to watch Iran play Bahrain in a 2005 match that would decide which team would go to the World Cup.

The movie opens on a bus, as Iranian fans make their way to the Azadi Stadium to see the crucial qualifier against Bahrain. The scene is joyous, with fans hanging out the windows and singing, psyching themselves up for the game. But one fan is more nervous than excited. This fan, it turns out, is a she and shes are not allowed into stadiums in Iran.

The female fan (we never find out names of any of the women in the film) is going in disguise, trying to avoid the glare of police at the stadium. But her cover is blown by her own nervousness and she is taken to a holding pen, along with other female football fans.

It’s in this holding pen, which is really just metal barricades shaped into a rectangle, that the majority of the movie takes place. The action of the movie, if it can be called that, is mostly the captive female fans attempting to persuade their captors to let them watch the game. Those looking for dramatic shots of the action on the field will be sorely disappointed; this is a movie about the repressive realities of contemporary Iranian life that just happens to have a crucial World Cup qualifier as its background.

The Azadi Stadium is as good a place as any to show many of the injustices that exist in Iran today. The rationales that the female fans are given for not being allowed into the stadium are as numerous as they are absurd: women will be harmed by the coarse language in the stadium, they should not be looking at attractive young male players, soccer is just not a women’s game, etc. The most argumentative of the detained female fans points out that Japanese women were allowed in to a game at the same stadium and wonders if “my only problem is I was born in Iran?”

The soldiers who become the women’s captors are hardly enthused with having to keep the fans from watching the game. One soldier is completely disinterested in his work, another continually sneaks peeks at the game, and a third laments that his conscription has taken him so far from his family farm. The root of the problem does not lie with the soldiers; they are merely forced to carry out the unjust laws created by those above them.

That seems to be the point Panahi is most interested in making. Individually, Iranians may support female fans’ right to go to the stadium, but the authorities in the country create a system that forces some citizens to oppress others.

Panahi also clearly hopes that Iranians might take collective action to stop these injustices from occurring. When a female fan escapes from her captor with the aid of some male fans, it is impossible not to see Panahi’s desire that more Iranians take a stand against injustice in their country. As the famous quote goes, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Jafar Panahi

Offside is undoubtedly an interesting, it is not the most engaging movie. Its topic may be unique, but the film itself is all too predictable. The soldier least interested initially in the female fans’ plight comes to see their perspective by the end of the film. The women are detained, but in the end are released onto the streets of Tehran to celebrate with their countrymen and women. Watching Offside, you’ll rarely be surprised by what’s coming next.

The one surprise in the movie is how little soccer there is. Leaving the theater, my friend and I concurred that we would have liked to see shots of what sounded like an intense game. Of course, as we quickly realized, not showing the game was an intentional decision on Panahi’s part and that we had little right to complain. We, two twenty-something American men, had been denied a peek at the game during the ninety-minute movie; women in Iran have been denied the right to watch soccer for their entire lives.