All posts tagged: Jafar

Jafar Panahi, Independent Iranian Directors Call out State Violence

Oscar-nominated Iranian director Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident) used a rare public appearance at the Berlin Film Festival to denounce what he described as an “unbelievable crime” unfolding in his home country, as independent filmmakers mounted a parallel campaign to spotlight artists killed and detained in a sweeping crackdown by the Islamic Republic. In an on-stage discussion with The Hollywood Reporter’s European Bureau Chief Scott Roxborough in Berlin on Thursday, Panahi said the festival wanted to retroactively present him with the Berlinale Golden Bear honor he won in 2015 for Taxi [the director, under a travel ban at the time, was unable to attend in person]. He said he declined, wanting to keep attention fixed on the Iranian regime’s violent repression of protestors, which has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. “They wanted to give me the Golden Bear I had won for Taxi, and I refused it, because of the situation in Iran,” Panahi said. “An unbelievable crime has happened. Mass murder has happened. People are not even allowed to mourn …

Jafar Panahi Explains How He Risked Everything to Create It Was Just an Accident

Published by Sam Flores

But he couldn’t hide forever. The film’s final sequence takes place in the city, in broad daylight. With only a few days left in the shoot, Panahi took one of the greatest risks of his career and drove to Tehran. “Gradually, we brought the camera out of the car. We knew that once the camera came out of the car, the chance of us falling into danger was high, and eventually they would come for us,” he says. Come they did: “We came to a spot where we left the crew, and we had to go get a shot from inside the car,” says Panahi. “We hadn’t even gone one or two kilometers on the way when they called and said, ‘They’ve raided the set and they’re saying you have to come back.’” Officers apprehended the crew. Moments later, it happened again. “We went and hid some equipment in the time we had before returning,” says the director. “We went back and saw 15 plainclothes officers had raided the work, searched all the guys and …

As Jafar Panahi Campaigns for an Oscar, He’s in “Very Heavy Mourning” for Iran

Published by Sam Flores

This March, Jafar Panahi could win his first Oscar. But the decorated Iranian filmmaker—whose masterful It Was Just an Accident has already won numerous awards this season—is struggling to celebrate his success amid the ongoing unrest in his home country. “I cannot think straight,” Panahi says in a Zoom call from Paris, translated by his interpreter Sheida Dayani. “I am in the process of a very heavy mourning because of what has happened in my country. I am in shock, like all the other people. This doesn’t allow me to feel much.” The peaks and valleys of Panahi’s awards season have been intense. It Was Just an Accident debuted in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. In January, the film was nominated for two Academy Awards: best international feature and best original screenplay. But on Saturday, the film’s nominated co-screenwriter Mehdi Mahmoudian was arrested in Iran for signing a letter accusing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for the brutal killings and arrests of thousands of protesters in early January. …

Jafar Panahi Iran protests, Returning Prison Come Out New Script

Published by Daniella Wilson

Dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi says anti-government protests sweeping Iran are inevitable as the country’s authoritarian regime is crumbling on many fronts. “We are dealing with a state that has fallen in all possible aspects. It has fallen politically, economically, environmentally and ideologically and from the point of view of foreign policy. Every which way you look at it, it has fallen,” Panahi told a Palm Springs International Film Festival panel of international directors vying for the Academy Award for best international feature film that was moderated by Kevin Cassidy, international news editor at The Hollywood Reporter. Panahi is currently on an international Oscar campaign to promote It Was Just an Accident, his Palme d’Or winner in Cannes. He argued that Iran’s clerical establishment remains in power because of its use of brutal and now bloody repression to end a popular uprising. “Because it is using force, it is still in place. If [the protests] didn’t happen today, it would have happened soon. And my sense is that people have decided what they want,” Panahi added. He …

Jafar Panahi’s Prison Sentence Appeal Sets Hearing Date in Iran

Published by Daniella Wilson

Palme d’Or-winning director Jafar Panahi has set a hearing date in Iran after filing an appeal against his sentencing for “propaganda activities against the regime” by the Tehran Revolutionary Court. On Dec. 1, the dissident Iranian filmmaker was handed a one-year prison sentence in absentia and a two-year travel ban, as well as a ban on membership in political and social groups or factions. Panahi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, wrote on social media Friday: “After appealing against the one-year prison sentence for propaganda activities against the regime of Mr. Jafar Panahi, Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court has set the hearing date for January 4, 2026.” His lawyer did not immediately make clear whether the director will be in attendance at the Jan. 4 hearing. Panahi’s latest legal and political run-in with Iranian authorities follows him having won the top prize in Cannes last year for It Was Just an Accident, a thriller that follows an ex-political prisoner who kidnaps a man he believes to be his torturer and then debates, with other dissidents, whether to …

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