Dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was arrested on Monday July 11, 2022 in Tehran according to the local news agency Mehr, reports AFP. It is in principle forbidden to shoot in your country, but awarded in the biggest European festivals. This arrest took place when he arrived at the Tehran prosecutor’s office to follow the case of another director, Mohammad Rasoulof, detained since Friday July 8.
Jafar Panahi, 62, was sentenced in 2011 to six years in prison for “propaganda against the regime”, after supporting the 2009 protest movement against the re-election of ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of the Islamic Republic. He had also been sentenced to a 20-year ban on directing or writing films, traveling or speaking in the media. Detained for two months in 2010, he lived under a conditional release regime that could be revoked at any time. In 2011, he managed to send to Europe a “logbook” of his life as a recluse, filmed in semi-clandestine conditions, and ironically titled this is not a movie.
When the Berlin festival consecrated him in 2015 for a film shot clandestinely, Taxi Tehran, Iranian conservatives fumed. He couldn’t leave the country to pick up his Golden Bear. His film Three Faces was awarded for his screenplay in 2018 at the Cannes Film Festival. Mr. Panahi was pleased that Iranian cinema is always “lively and dynamic“with the presence of the films”by two Iranian filmmakers“, the other being Asghar Farhadi.”Very clearly, this does not please those who want the death of Iranian independent cinema”, ready according to him “to all threats“, he added. Jafar Panahi’s films, which examine social injustices or the place of women in Iran, usually arouse keen interest abroad.
The Venice Film Festival, dean of film festivals, asked the next day “immediate release” of Iranian filmmaker and opponent Jafar Panahi arrested in Tehran.