Iran has sentenced acclaimed filmmaker and Cannes Palme d’Or winner Jafar Panahi to one year in prison and imposed a travel ban for allegedly engaging in “propaganda activities” against the state. The verdict, delivered in absentia, was confirmed by his lawyer Mostafa Nili.
Iran’s Revolutionary Court has sentenced award-winning director Jafar Panahi to one year in prison in absentia for “propaganda activities” against the state.
Panahi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, shared with AFP that the sentence includes a two-year travel ban and prohibition of Panahi from membership of any political or social groups. He added that they would file an appeal.
The 65-year-old dissident filmmaker won this year’s Palme d’Or for his film It Was Just An Accident - the first time an Iranian filmmaker claimed the top Cannes prize since Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry in 1997.
Panahi was jailed shortly before making his latest film and was only released after going on a hunger strike.
He has clashed with the repressive Iranian authorities as far back as 2003, has been imprisoned twice in Iran, and was banned from filmmaking for his anti-regime stance and “propaganda against the state”. He spent seven months behind bars in 2022 and 2023 for demonstrating against the imprisonment of his friend and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof.
Panahi has continued to make films in defiance of the authorities and is best known for films like This Is Not a Film, No Bears and Taxi Tehran, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2015.
Panahi has been in the US promoting It Was Just an Accident, and was at the Gotham Awards last night, where he won three awards: Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best International Feature.
“I would like to dedicate the honour of this award to independent filmmakers in Iran and around the world, filmmakers who keep the camera rolling in silence, without support, and at times by risking everything they have, only with their faith in truth and humanity,” said Panahi, after accepting his first award of the night for Best Screenplay.
“I hope that this dedication will be considered a small tribute to all filmmakers who have been deprived of the right to see and to be seen, but continue to create and exist.”
Panahi, who currently resides in France, is due to attend the Marrakech Film Festival on Thursday. He will take part in an onstage discussion after the screening of his award-winning film.
In the film, a thriller inspired by Panahi’s time in prison, a group of formerly imprisoned Iranians contemplate whether to exact revenge on a man they believe to be their former jailer and torturer. It serves as an unflinching condemnation of the Islamist Republic’s repression and is a timeless commentary of the sins of state despotism.
In our review of It Was Just An Accident, we wrote: “Shot in secret, considering Panahi was not allowed filming permission from the authorities, the result is a taut, tense and tightly scripted drama that surprises due to its deft tonal shifts. (...) It’s a powerfully engrossing work that explores the consequences of torture, the price of revenge and whether mercy is possible, as the characters are rattled by the possibility that fighting violence with violence could dehumanize them further.”
It Was Just An Accident is France’s entry for the International Feature award at the forthcoming Oscars.
