Oscar-nominated Iranian director Jafar Panahi gets five-year jail
“Oscar-nominated Iranian director Jafar Panahi, ‘It Was Just an Accident’, has been sentenced in absentia to five years and one month in prison by an Islamic Revolutionary Court in Iran. Panahi at the t…”
Panahi at the time was outside of Iran, promoting It Was Just an Accident, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar in the best international feature category, representing France., Mostafa Nili, Jafar Panahi’s lawyer, reported that his client’s bank accounts were frozen last week.
And on visiting the Enforcement of Judgments unit at the Culture and Media Prosecutor’s Office, Panahi and his lawyer learned that a new judgment had been issued against him in absentia and without prior legal notice. Panahi has been arrested and imprisoned in Iran on a host of occasions in the past.
In 2020, he was sentenced to six years in prison, along with a 20-year ban on filmmaking, screenwriting and traveling abroad. In July 2022, he was arrested to serve this sentence and transferred to Evin Prison.
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After seven months in prison, Panahi was released in Feb. 2023. In December 2025, this filmmaker was also sentenced to one year in prison and received additional punitive measures on charges of “propaganda activity against the system.”
That verdict was upheld by the Iranian Revolutionary Court after an appeal. Despite his run-ins with the Iranian authorities, Panahi continues to make movies. Those include The White Balloon, which won the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995.
His film The Circle won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2000, and his film Taxi earned the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2015.
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