The film was shot secretly in Iran and stars Panahi, Naser Hashemi [fa], Vahid Mobasri, Bakhtiar Panjei and Mina Kavani.

[3] It won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in September 2022,[4] and received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics.

Prohibited by the government from making films and from leaving Iran, owing to his politically critical movies, filmmaker Jafar Panahi—playing a fictionalized version of himself—has rented a room at the village of Jaban, near the Iran–Turkey border, where he is remotely directing a docudrama about an Iranian couple, Bakhtiar and Zara, who are attempting to secure fake passports so they can flee the country after years of government abuse.

As he arrives at the village, he's approached by a young woman, Gozal, who desperately asks Panahi if he took a photo of her with her boyfriend, Solduz, saying that should anyone see it "all hell will break loose" and "there will be blood".

He's asked about the pictures he took, and is told about a tradition in the village: when a girl is born, her umbilical cord is cut in the name of her future husband.

That night, he's visited by Solduz, who explains to him that he and Gozal are in love and that in a week's time they will elope and leave the village.

They leave the house and as they separate at a fork in the road, the villager says that there are no bears; the stories are made up to scare people.

Jacob objects angrily when Panahi tells the camera that he can't understand the traditions of the village, like cutting a baby girl's umbilical cord in the name of a future husband.

In addition to writing, directing and producing No Bears, Panahi also stars in the film with Naser Hashemi [fa], Vahid Mobasri, Bakhtiar Panjei, Mina Khosravani, and others.

[6] Production wrapped in May 2022,[5] and the rights were traded shortly after at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival by Paris-based Celluloid Dreams, which had undertaken the same task for the director's previous works.

[7] According to Panahi, after the arrest of his two colleagues, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mustafa Al-Ahmad [fa], he had expressed solidarity, along with several hundred other filmmakers, over the Internet; they are said to have demonstrated online against the police brutality in Iran.

[12] He later called on "all filmmakers and other personalities" to join a flash mob that will take place on the red carpet before the premiere on September 9 at 16:30 at the Palazzo del Cinema, to protest Panahi's arrest and to show solidarity with others from around the world who have faced persecution in the same way.

[19] Panahi competed for the Golden Lion, the main prize of the Venice Film Festival for the second time; he first received this award for his movie The Circle (2000).

[20] No Bears won the Special Jury Prize with actors Mina Kavani and Reza Heydari accepting the award in Panahi's absence.