Jafar Panahi’s daring political comedy – filmed during a real football match – shone a light on gender inequality in Iran. Two decades later, it remains bleakly relevant.
The date was 8 June, 2005. Iran was facing off against Bahrain in a World Cup qualifying match taking place in Tehran. Football fans turned up en-masse – 80,000 people were packed into Azadi Stadium – cheering, waving flags and donning either red or white football shirts. And, in theory at least, they were all men.
Actress Sima Mobarakshahi knows this to be untrue – because she was there. Since the end of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women have been restricted from entering Iran’s stadiums with Iranian authorities citing social, religious and political concerns as justifications for their exclusion. But just because restrictions are in place does not mean they are passively accepted.
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This is the world in which Jafar Panahi’s 2006 film Offside unfolds. Three years after the release of British cult-classic, Bend It Like Beckham, women’s stories were once again at the heart of a football film. Panahi’s Offside follows a group of women who disguise themselves as men to sneak into Azadi stadium to watch Iran’s World Cup qualifier against Bahrain. Filmed largely on location during the match, viewers only catch snapshots of the game, with dramatic moments relayed through dialogue as the film’s female characters are all caught by security and ejected from the stadium.
The film leans into absurdity, creating ridiculous scenarios to undermine the very real restrictions that organise the lives of its characters, and women in Iran by extension. For example, a female fan is escorted from their holding pen to a men’s bathroom inside the stadium – because, of course, there are only men’s bathrooms. To maintain discretion and comply with gendered restrictions, the soldier orders her to wear a football poster over her face, with holes cut out for eyes. Yet Offside resists simplifying its male characters: though the soldiers holding the women captive experience male privilege, they are also at the whims of society’s regulations – whether that be by class, geography or toxic masculinity – making for observant musings and moments of tenderness between characters.
Marred in controversy at home but acclaimed abroad, Offside was screened at the annual Fajr Film Festival in Tehran but never had a wider release in Panahi’s home country, disqualifying it from Oscars eligibility. The film did, however, win the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, and was widely praised by critics, lauded as “a quietly intelligent and humorous alternative look at football, pop culture and the position of women” by The Guardian.
And yet, 20 years later, the problems Offside depicts cannot be neatly resigned to the history books. While the restrictions on Iranian women attending football matches remain contested, the anniversary also comes at a time of renewed pressure on filmmaker Panahi, who has had a sentence upheld for propaganda against the Iranian state for his filmmaking.
Mobarakshahi was 19 years old at the time of filming, playing the role of ‘the first girl’. As the name implies, she is the first character we meet, slouching on a noisy bus of jubilant football fans on the way to the match, careful not to draw attention to herself. Mobarakshahi had no idea she would be setting foot inside Azadi stadium that day. Her character was never scripted to enter the stadium, instead planned to be caught by guards early on in the film. While the excursion wasn’t necessary for production, Panahi wanted Mobarakshahi to experience the match; it was the first one she ever attended.
Soldiers on military duty stood at every entrance, patting people down, but Panahi ushered her, along with their male production crew, into the stadium through a “hidden way” for the first half of the match. It helped that she was in costume for the film, and so disguised as a man. Under layers of baggy second-hand clothes, a hat to cover her hair, and a bodysuit underlayer – “like a swimming costume, but tighter” to flatten her breasts – Mobarakshahi entered undetected.
As she made her way inside, the first thing she noticed was the “hum”. “Because I loved football, I used to hear it from the television – this sound in the stadium,” Mobarakshahi says. “And when I went inside, it was the first thing [she noticed].” At half time, with the score still nil-nil, they left the ground and awaited the results in the streets, ready to record the reactions of fans on camera – whatever the result may have been. It meant the ending of Offside was left up to chance (or rather, the 22 players on the pitch) allowing the crew to capture history as it was happening. Just three minutes into the second half, Mohammad Nosrati headed the ball into the back of Bahrain’s net, putting Iran in the lead and ultimately securing them the win. As the actors were immersed in the city’s celebrations for the film’s final scene, satire revealed truth, just as when Mobarakshahi sat in men’s clothes among the stands.
Back then, Mobarakshahi wasn’t aware of the risk she had taken. “The laws and their enforcement in Iran can be complicated and unpredictable,” she says. At one point during filming she was stopped by security. Panahi and the rest of the crew came over, seeing the commotion, and they were all taken into a van, and held for almost an hour. “At first, I was really frightened because I had no idea what was going to happen to us. But eventually, everything was resolved and we were allowed to leave,” she continues. “I think the fact that we had a filming permit helped us get out of that situation. Things might have turned out very differently under different circumstances.”
That film permit was another remarkable aspect of Offside’s bold production. To get production for the film off the ground, the team submitted a proposal to Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for a less controversial script under the title The World Cup. The film’s co-writer, Shadmehr Rastin, says the fake application was made in his name, “so if anything had gone wrong, [I] would have been detained”.
Another big risk, one would think, but between puffs of his pipe, Rastin explains that at the time, he was not so concerned about the potential repercussions. If they had been caught, he expected a telling off – perhaps in “the worst case”, the authorities would confiscate anything they had shot.
Besides, Panahi was at the helm of the project; a famed director who had built a reputation in Iran for sociological storytelling and creating art that evaded censorship, so the team put their faith in him. Even in conversation, Rastin defers to Panahi when questioned. “Mr Panahi kept his team and his circle small,” he says. “[He] only worked with trusted people.”
Since Offside, times have changed. Following his critically lauded film It Was Just An Accident, Panahi has been handed a new prison sentence, on top of his suspended sentence, and had his assets seized in Iran; Mobarakshahi has left the country and works as an actress in Belgium, and Rastin can only log on to social media every few weeks via a VPN amid the country’s internet blackouts – on one occasion to see this interview request waiting for him. The first thing he does? Contact Panahi to tell him. As Rastin tells it, the pair marvelled at the fact that 20 years had passed, the anniversary until then had escaped their notice. This was just as Panahi had landed in Iran for his mother’s funeral, shortly before his 2025 prison sentence was upheld.
Meanwhile, change for Iran’s female football fans has been small, slow and inconsistent. In recent years, the death of Sahar Khodayari, an Iranian football fan who set herself on fire after being arrested for sneaking into a stadium dressed as a man, made headlines and was met with international outrage. Khodayari, who had become known online as ‘Blue Girl’ after her favourite team Esteghlal’s colours, died in hospital of her injuries in 2019, 13 years after Offside was released.
In 2022, Iran allowed a limited number of women to watch the World Cup qualifying match against Iraq, once again held in Tehran’s Azadi stadium, yet only two months later, despite having tickets, women were blocked by police from entering the World Cup qualifier against Lebanon and pepper sprayed. In 2023, women were allowed into Azadi to watch the Tehran derby, but they were limited to 3,000 tickets, and given seats with poor vantage points.
Rastin hopes to see real gains for women’s rights within Iranian football. He recalls the initial response to Offside from his industry peers – while they conceded that the film was good, they concluded it was “gimmicky”. Rastin was told the film had a shelf life; that the restrictions on women, barring them from football stadiums, would be lifted. It was only a matter of time. “And 20 years later, still, women cannot go to the stadium easily. So the film still resonates,” he retorts. “Every time I see them, I tell them, ‘Okay, when is the expiry date due?’”
Mobarakshahi hopes one day audiences will watch Offside and be surprised such restrictions ever existed, but for now, she says gravely, “that moment has not arrived.”
