{"id":643363,"date":"2026-10-28T02:20:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T02:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/643363\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T02:20:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T02:20:17","slug":"jafar-panahi-faces-a-five-year-prison-term-in-new-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/643363\/","title":{"rendered":"Jafar Panahi Faces a Five Year Prison Term in New Ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCannes Palme d\u2019Or-winning Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi<\/a> \u2013 who was facing a one-year prison sentence <\/a>\u2013 has now been sentenced by a Tehran Revolutionary Court to five years and one month in jail in a separate ruling, according to the Emtedad News Agency, an online Iranian reformist media outlet.<\/p>\n

\n\tPanahi\u2019s lawyer Mostafa Nili told Emtedad that the court has now sentenced his client in absentia to five years and one month of imprisonment \u2013 though implementation of both rulings is discretionary \u2013 and issued an order for the confiscation of Panahi\u2019s assets, plus a two-year ban on using social media a two-year travel ban. It is unclear what the charges against Panahi are in this case.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawyer said that after Panahi\u2019s bank accounts were suddenly frozen last week, he went to the prosecutor\u2019s Tehran office with his client and learned of the verdict which has been issued in absentia. According to Nili, the case file stated that Panahi was living outside Iran<\/a>, though the director had returned to Iran on March 30, 2026 shortly after the ceremony for the 98th Academy Awards, in which his latest film \u201dIt Was Just an Accident\u201d made it to the nomination stage as France\u2019s candidate in the Best International Feature Film Category.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the past two decades, Panahi has had frequent run-ins with the Iranian authorities.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2010, the revered auteur \u2014 known globally also for other prize-winning works such as \u201cThe Circle,\u201d \u201cOffside,\u201d \u201cThis is Not a Film,\u201d \u201cTaxi\u201d and \u201cNo Bears\u201d \u2014 was banned from making movies, speaking to the press and traveling, though he surreptitiously kept making them anyway.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2022, Panahi was arrested in connection with protests by a group of filmmakers but was released about seven months later.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ban was lifted in April 2023, and Iranian authorities allowed Panahi to travel to Cannes to launch \u201cIt Was Just an Accident.\u201d Panahi subsequently traveled widely to promote the drama, which centers around an outpouring of strong feelings by a group of former prisoners toward a torturous guard and stems from his incarceration.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut he returned to Iran despite the fact that, at that point, he faced a one-year prison sentence in his home country and a climate of escalating tension that made his return very risky.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI am the kind of person who needs to be in his country,\u201d Panahi told Variety.<\/a> \u201cI need to breathe there and work there. And even if they want to go ahead with that prison sentence, they can go ahead. Nothing will change my mind about going back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cannes Palme d\u2019Or-winning Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi \u2013 who was facing a one-year prison sentence \u2013 has now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,16609,119764,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-643363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-iran","tag-jafar-panahi","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}