Iran sentences award-winning director Jafar Panahi to year in prison for ‘propaganda activities’

Iran has sentenced the Palme d’Or-winning film-maker Jafar Panahi in absentia to one year in prison and a travel ban over “propaganda activities” against the country.The sentence includes a two-year ban on leaving Iran and prohibition of Panahi from membership of any political or social groups, his lawyer Mostafa Nili said, adding that they would file an appeal.Nili said the charges against the Iranian director were engaging in “propaganda activities” against the state but did not elaborate. “Mr Panahi is outside Iran right now,” he added.Panahi, 65, won the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize this year for It Was Just an Accident, a film in which five ex-inmates contemplate whether to exact revenge on a man they believe to be their former jailer.Last month, he was on a tour of the US visiting Los Angeles, New York and Telluride, Colorado, to promote his latest Oscar-hopeful movie.The film has been selected by France as its official nomination for the Academy Awards, and is widely expected to make the shortlist for the best international feature at the gala event in March.Panahi’s film It Was Just an Accident is expected to be shortlisted for the Academy Awards next year. Photograph: Landmark Media/AlamyPanahi’s Cannes win was reported by Iranian media, which at the time hailed the award with a picture of him.He has won a host of prizes at European film festivals and showcased his debut film The White Balloon in Cannes in 1995, which won an award for best first feature.In 2010, Panahi was banned from making films and from leaving Iran after supporting mass anti-government protests a year earlier and making a series of films that critiqued the state of modern Iran.Convicted of “propaganda against the system”, he was sentenced to six years in jail but served only two months behind bars before being released on bail.A year after being handed a 20-year ban on film-making, he dispatched a documentary with the title This is Not a Film to the Cannes festival on a flash drive stashed in a cake.His 2015 film Taxi was shot entirely in a car and featured Panahi playing a taxi driver.In 2022, he was arrested in connection with protests by a group of film-makers but was released nearly seven months later.Iranian film-makers, prominent media figures and celebrities are closely monitored in Iran and their work reviewed for content deemed critical of Iran.Last year, multi-award-winning director Mohammad Rasoulof fled Iran to escape a prison sentence on charges of “collusion against national security”.