The start of Hollywood’s awards season has been marked by highs and lows for Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi.
On Monday night, the writer and director was present when his film It Was Just an Accident won big at New York’s Gotham Awards, which celebrate independent movies. Hours earlier, his lawyer shared that Panahi was sentenced in absentia to a year in prison in Iran.
According to his lawyer, Mostafa Nili, who posted about the sentence on X and shared the news with Agence France-Presse, the sentence also includes a two-year ban on travel from Iran and a prohibition of any association with political groups, on charges of “propaganda activities against the system.” Nili added that Panahi’s legal team plans to appeal the ruling.
Last month, Panahi toured the U.S. for the first time to promote It Was Just An Accident, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May. The film follows a group of ex-prisoners in Iran who consider seeking revenge on a man they believe to be their former jailer. The international co-production from Iran, France and Luxembourg is France’s submission for best international feature for the Oscars. It Was Just An Accident was shot in secret, a common practice for Iranian filmmakers.
At the Gotham Awards, which many consider to be the starting point for awards season, Panahi picked up three major prizes, including best international feature and best director. In his acceptance speech for best original screenplay, he dedicated the award to “filmmakers who keep the camera rolling in silence, without support, and at times risking everything they have, only with their faith in truth and humanity.”
“I hope that this dedication would be considered a small tribute,” he added, through an interpreter, “to all filmmakers who have been deprived of the right to see and to be seen, but continue to create and to exist.”
Panahi’s sentencing was not his first. The director was previously arrested in Iran in 2010, sparking public outcry from filmmaking giants such as Martin Scorsese, who denounced the ruling at Cannes that year. Although his sentence in 2010 included a 20-year ban on filmmaking, Panahi continued to make films in secret, including two documentaries, This Is Not a Film (2011) and Taxi (2015), the first of which was smuggled out of Iran on a USB stick.
In 2022, he was again arrested after seeking information on the charges against fellow Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. He was detained for seven months and released in 2023 after a hunger strike.
Panahi is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers to come out of Iran in recent decades. He is one of only four directors to win the highest competitive prizes at the “big three” film festivals — at Cannes, Venice and Berlin — and is especially celebrated for his defiance of the Iranian government’s censorship. Despite his multiple arrests, Panahi has repeatedly stated that he can’t see himself leaving Iran for good, and he remains committed to making his films there and nurturing the next generation of filmmakers in his home country.
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