There are certain films that can be made at certain times and in certain places. Jafar Panahi's This is Not a Film is one of these and every lover of film in the world wishes that it didn't have to be made.

Panahi is one of the world's most acclaimed film directors, winner of awards at Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Locarno (to name only four of the most major). In 2010 Panahi was arrested on the jumped-up charges of colluding against the nation of Iran, committing crimes against the country's national security and for creating propaganda against the state. It was whilst under house arrest in these circumstances that Panahi created this film alongside fellow filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb.

Sitting at home, waiting for the verdict of his appeal against his sentence, the filmmaker picks up a camera and records his life, conversations and thoughts. After a telephone call, his friend Mojtaba arrives and takes over the recording. We see Panahi reacting to outside events - either the news of the tsunamni in Japan on the television, or bangs from outside first representing the beginning of celebration for the Iranian New Year, and then gunshots - and rehearsing scenes from unmade screenplays with lo-fi, handmade stage set representations patterned on the floor. After Mojtaba has to go home, Panahi rides the lift, chatting with the boy who collects the litter of the apartment block about his life and future plans.

A defiant symbol of quiet resistance from a man who has been at the forefront of Iranian cultural export since the release of his first feature film, The White Balloon in 1995, this film had the honour and disgrace to be smuggled out of Iran to Cannes on a flash drive concealed in a birthday cake. It plays on a run at the ICA opening tonight. Panahi is currently awaiting trial on these charges and is sentenced to six years in jail, a twenty year ban on making any films, writing any screenplays, giving any form of interview - nationally or internationally - and is not allowed to leave the country. In the week of the film's release, Mirtahmasb was also arrested, though details on that are still scarce.

Shot on consumer HD video and on an iPhone, this possibly the rarest example of documentary as journalism, as personal diary, as dramatic narrative, and is truly one of the great films to be made, and, conversely, not. It's funny, bittersweet, sad and always touching.

This is Not a Film plays at the ICA from today until 12 April.

The latest artist to feature as part of Zabludowicz Collection's monthly solo presentation of emerging UK talent, Hannah Perry, follows up her recent show at Cell Projects with Wonderful While It Lasts. It marks the artist's first foray into two-dimensional mixed media, anchored by the familiar video installation format. Film is filtered through coloured acrylic, printed photographs and tabloid headlines, with the aim of extracting the moving image from its frame via an immersive cinematic environment.

The video itself, projected and beamed from monitors, fuses YouTube footage, news broadcasts and family recordings into a portrait of British youth and national identity, edited to samples of house music and distorted audio clips. What manifests is a vision both personal and universal, structured around theoretical excerpts from Slavoj Žižek, found statements, and Perry's own affirmations - these add thematic direction and serve to delineate the film's constituent moments. Cohesion is achieved by feeding digital footage through VHS mixers to arrive at a consistently glitchy whole; hypnotic loops are punctuated by jarring audio visual breaks, which quite literally navigate the textures and rhythms of adolescent experience.

The scratchy, grainy imperfection of Perry's work naturally lends itself to improvisation; found imagery and sound accrue new layers as they are re-sampled. The artist's recent presentation at Zabludowicz, Erotic Discourse, essentially constituted an edit of her installation, transposing its sound and visuals to live performance. A typical rhythmic structure was articulated by the performers' footsteps, providing an ostinato to offset the live drums, audio samples and projected flashes of light.

A visceral testament to the potential of youth, and witness to a destructiveness that accompanies limitless possibility, Wonderful While It Lasts plays out on screen as a kind of nihilistic burn-out into adulthood. Perry captures a point of conflict, the moment before youthful optimism yields to adult realism. This ambivalence translates into a sense of dislocation, an attempt on the part of the artist to reconcile or perhaps highlight the gulf between her own childhood and adult life.

Zabludowicz Collection Invites: Hannah Perry is on at Zabludowicz Collection until 01 April.

Julie Hrischeva

When Hauser & Wirth opened their Savile Row gallery in Autumn 2010, it was a statement of bravado and intent; becoming the largest commercial gallery space in London, right in the middle of an economic downturn. How have they fared? In comparison to most other commercial galleries, Hauser & Wirth have had a consistently successful recession, and in fact were only able to move into the space because it suddenly came onto the market. The gallery take a canny and sophisticated approach to display and sales of contemporary art, this is to some degree evident in their current exhibition programme. Tomorrow, Because's Culture section will look at the show of work by Dutch-born, London-based fine artist Michael Raedecker which is currently on display in their North gallery, and today, the exhibition of work in their South gallery: Visions, Waves and Roads by Mary Heillmann.

This certainly hasn't been the most well-reviewed show in London at the moment, but your Culture section has to admit to being a big fan of the American post-pop painter, and while this show doesn't reach the heights of her best work it is certainly manages to engage, strike and comfort an audience. Constructed, misshapen canvasses, painted in vibrant, largely primary colours adorn an abstracted, minimalist personal space. Heilmann fabricates angled coffee tables, tea sets, chairs and dinner plates and wall-based ornaments.

What Heilmann prepares are a series of twentieth century concepts made manifest for a modern-day audience. Blocky, geometric and bordering on the fashionable; the show mightn't be the most original that you'll see all year, but it has the ability to dig deep into your desires about where the intersection of art, design and function may meet. It's a fun-filled West Coast sensibility that will take you places.

Mary Heilmann: Visions, Waves and Roads is at Hauser & Wirth until 05 April.