Iranian director given jail sentence while on trip to collect US awards

Award-winning Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has been given a prison sentence on charges of creating propaganda against the political system, his lawyer has said, on the same day his new film won a string of awards in the US.

Panahi has been handed a one-year sentence and a travel ban in Iran, his lawyer said on Monday.

However, he was in New York to pick up three prizes, including best director, at the Gotham Awards for his latest film, It Was Just An Accident, which he shot illegally in Iran.

Panahi, 65, has served two previous spells in prison in his home country, and said in an interview shortly before receiving his latest sentence that he planned to return.

Panahi is one of Iran’s leading directors but has been subjected to constraints from authorities including a ban on making films in the country as well as the prison sentences and travel restrictions.

He didn’t refer to the new sentence in his Gotham Awards speeches, but praised “film-makers who keep the camera rolling in silence, without support, and at times, by risking everything they have, only with their faith in truth and humanity”.

He added: “I hope that this dedication will be considered a small tribute to all film-makers who have been deprived of the right to see and to be seen, but continue to create and to exist.”

It Was Just An Accident also won best screenplay and best international film, and is expected to be a contender at the Oscars in Hollywood in the spring.

Panahi covertly shot the film, which tells the tale of five ordinary Iranians who are confronted with a man they believed tortured some of them in jail.

He has said it was partly inspired by his last spell in jail and stories that other prisoners “told me about, the violence and the brutality of the Iranian government”.

When the film won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in France in May, he used his acceptance speech to speak out against the restrictions of the regime.

Panahi was jailed in 2022 for protesting against the detention of two fellow film-makers who had been critical of the authorities. He was released after seven months of the six-year sentence.

He was previously sentenced to six years in 2010 for supporting anti-government protests and creating “propaganda against the system”. He was released on conditional bail after two months.

In an interview with the Financial Times conducted in Los Angeles shortly before his latest sentence was delivered, he recalled a recent conversation with an elderly Iranian exile who he had met in the city.

“She begged me not to go back,” he said. “But I told her I can’t live outside Iran. I can’t adapt to anywhere else.

“And I said she shouldn’t worry, because what are the officials going to do that they haven’t done already?”