Iran has convicted and sentenced Cannes-winning filmmaker Jafar Panahi to one year in prison and a two-year travel ban for “propaganda activities”.
He was not in the country when the ruling came down.
Panahi is a renowned Iranian filmmaker who earlier this year won the Palme d’Or for his political thriller It Was Just an Accident, which is also currently in serious Oscar contention.
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The filmmaker’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, said Panahi intended to file an appeal against the decision.
Panahi is seen by the Iranian regime as a dissident artist and has previously twice thrown him in prison. The government had also imposed a long travel ban against the filmmaker, who until this year wasn’t able to leave Iran.
His first stint in prison, inside Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, happened after he supported anti-government protests in 2009. Panahi has detailed his experiences of being held in solitary confinement and eight-hour-long interrogations while blindfolded.
In that instance, he was released on bail after serving two months of a six-year sentence for “propaganda against the system”.
He was again imprisoned in 2022 after he enquired about his friend and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who had been arrested. This time, he served seven months and spent his time with other political prisoners.
It Was Just an Accident is a favourite to be nominated for multiple Oscars. Credit: Madman
His own experiences and their stories formed the foundation of It Was Just an Accident, which tells the tale of a former political prisoner who recognises and then abducts a man he suspects had interrogated and tortured him.
It Was Just an Accident had its Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in June, where he was a guest. Sydney Film Festival also programmed a retrospective of his work. The film will be in wide release in Australia from January 29.
Panahi has spent the past few months travelling while promoting his film around the world. It is the official entry from France for the Oscar international feature category. French companies partly funded the production.
It Was Just an Accident is also a favourite to be nominated for best feature and Panahi a frontrunner for a best director nod.
Last year, Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig was the German entry into the Oscars, after the filmmaker fled Iran during the post-production process and became a political refugee in Germany. Rasoulof had been charged with “collusion against national security” and faced imminent arrest.
The Iranian government attempts to tightly control the country’s cultural and artistic sectors. Films must have government approval to be made, which has led to many directors and writers to illegally work, and be creative with their process.
Panahi has previously smuggled a film, the documentary This Is Not a Film, out of Iran on a USB stick handed to someone who was going abroad.
In interviews, Panahi has spoken about his hope for Iran’s future, and what he sees as irreversible changes within its population, citing as an example the Women, Life, Freedom movement of 2022 which saw swathes of women protest on the streets despite violent repression from the authoritarian government.
When he debuted It Was Just an Accident at Cannes in May, he said at the premiere, “How can I be free while in Iran, there are still so many of the greatest directors and actresses of Iranian cinema, who, because they participated in and supported the demonstrators during the Femme Liberte movement, are today prevented from working?”
Speaking with Interview magazine, Panahi said, “I have to make films, and I consider this my natural right. Way more than I want to think of it as a political resistance act, it is my basic human right to make the film I want to make.
“So now that I want to make the film that I want, I have to also pay the price for it. This is not bravery or anything, it’s just me reclaiming my rights.”
