‘It Was Just An Accident. Director Jafar Panahi Sentenced To One 12 months In Jail

Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to 1 yr in jail and a two-year journey ban in absentia, his lawyer Mustafa Nili introduced on X on Monday.

The lawyer mentioned that Branch 26 of the Tehran Islamic Revolutionary Court had additionally banned the director from membership of political and social teams as a result of “propaganda activities against the system.”

Panahi is at the moment on the awards season path together with his Cannes Palme d’Or-winning drama It Was Just An Accident, which is France’s entry to the 2026 Oscars.

He is at the moment in New York for the Gotham Awards tonight, after which heads to the Marrakech Film Festival in Morocco the place he’ll take part in a Conversation occasion on December 4, earlier than returning to Europe.

Panahi has lengthy been within the crosshairs of Iran’s hardline Islamic Republic authorities.

Most not too long ago, he spent seven months within the nation’s infamous Evin jail after being arrested in July 2023 when he went to the jail to investigate concerning the the whereabouts of fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad who had been arrested just a few days beforehand.

It was introduced just a few days later that the Iranian authorities had determined to reactivate a six-year sentence initially meted out to Panahi in 2010 alongside a 20-year filmmaking and journey ban.

The costs and sentence have been related to his attendance of a funeral in 2009 of a scholar shot lifeless within the Green Revolution and his later try to shoot a function set in opposition to the backdrop of the rebellion.

Panahi was launched from his newest stint in jail in February 2023 after occurring starvation strike.

The director made his first journey to the Cannes Film Festival in 15 years in May of this yr, to accompany his clandestinely shot movie It Was Just An Accident, the place it went on to win the Palme d’Or.