The Iranian director Jafar Panahi – winner of this year’s Palme d’Or for It Was Just an Accident – has been sentenced to one year in prison by Iranian authorities. He was charged with “propaganda activities” in absentia. His legal team has vowed to appeal the decision. Ironically, the ruling came the same day as Panahi won several Gotham Awards in New York.
Now 65, Panahi is currently travelling outside Iran to promote his film. This year, he won the Cannes Film Festival’s highest honour for It Was Just an Accident, an ensemble drama about five former inmates wrestling with vengeance and forgiveness. The film has also been selected by France as its official entry for the forthcoming Academy Awards.
In the race for an Oscar
Despite past praise from Iranian media, the director has long been a target of the authorities. In 2010 he was banned from filmmaking and travel after backing mass protests, later smuggling his documentary This Is Not a Film to Cannes on a flash drive hidden in a cake.
He later spent 86 days in prison in 2022 for going to the prosecutor’s office to inquire about Mohammad Rasoulof, a fellow Iranian director who had been arrested for participating in a protest.
Panahi has said that he will return to Iran after the Oscars season.
(Michael Leahy. Source: France24 et al. Photo : Kacy Bao, via Wikimedia)