{"id":303609,"date":"2026-02-22T00:15:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T00:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/303609\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T00:15:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T00:15:07","slug":"jafar-panahi-condemns-murderous-islamic-regime-during-uk-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/303609\/","title":{"rendered":"Jafar Panahi Condemns ‘Murderous’ Islamic Regime During UK Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAcclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi<\/a>, visiting London for the first time in 20 years, condemned the Iranian Islamic Republic for \u201cmurdering\u201d student protesters in Tehran\u00a0last month.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director is in town to attend Sunday\u2019s\u00a0EE BAFTA<\/a> Film Awards where his latest picture,\u00a0It Was Just An Accident<\/a>,\u00a0is nominated in\u00a0BAFTA\u2019s Film Not in the English language category.<\/p>\n

\n\tThrough interpreter Iante Roach, Panahi explained that \u201cunfortunately the [U.K.] government wouldn\u2019t give me a visa. One of the many excuses that they employed was that I spent time behind bars, and I never really understood what they meant.\u201d (Panahi has been in prison twice in Iran on the dubious charges of anti-government propaganda.)<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was speaking at a reception hosted by MUBI at Soho House on Dean Street in London for BAFTA voters.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJafar Panahi at the MUBI-hosted BAFTA reception for It Was Just An Accident (Baz Bamigboye\/Deadline)<\/p>\n

\n\tPanahi spoke to guests about Islamic Republics using violence against peaceful protesters.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUnfortunately, my country Iran is not in a good place today,\u201d\u00a0he said. \u201cActually, it\u2019s going through\u00a0its worst period. But this film [It Was Just An Accident] is a very good document. It\u2019s a document that shows that the people of my country reject violence. And yet, unfortunately, violence is imposed on them by [those in] power.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added: \u201cIn the events that unfolded one month ago, 235 school students were murdered. That is of course 235 school students whose names have been found. There\u2019s many other children whose whereabouts are completely uncertain. This really proves that the demonstrators\u00a0were not violent demonstrators. Fathers and mothers went onto the street with their children.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen he made the film, Panahi said that\u00a0\u201cwhat motivated me the most was to make a film at the heart of this regime looking at the future and asking: Can we have a future without violence?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filmmaker said that the production was a group effort \u201cwhere everyone took great risks from actors to DoPs to sound recordists \u2014 every single person\u00a0involved in the making of this film wanted to make an independent film and our greatest desire was to then share it with world audiences.\u00a0Let us hope that more and more of these films will be made, and let us hope \u2026 that one day we will be in a world where the cycle of violence stops everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPanahi said he will return to Iran even though \u201cthere are threats that I\u2019ll be arrested. I do not fear what awaits me there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMUBI\u2019s\u00a0global distribution chief, Arianna Bocco, introduced Panahi and Philipe Martin, the Paris-based backer of several of Panahi\u2019s films, to BAFTA members at the private reception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, visiting London for the first time in 20 years, condemned the Iranian Islamic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[74327,80419,152854,146,85,46,53080,53081],"class_list":["post-303609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bafta","tag-bafta-awards","tag-ee-bafta-film-awards","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-it-was-just-an-accident","tag-jafar-panahi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}