{"id":816136,"date":"2026-10-28T03:56:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T03:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816136\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T03:56:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T03:56:13","slug":"jafar-panahi-sentenced-to-five-years-in-prison-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816136\/","title":{"rendered":"Jafar Panahi Sentenced to Five Years in Prison in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi<\/a> has received a five-year-and-one-month prison sentence in absentia from Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court. <\/p>\n

The Oscar-nominated director returned to his home country earlier this year\u00a0after a global awards push for his thriller \u201cIt Was Just an Accident,\u201d\u00a0<\/a>which won the Palme d\u2019Or at Cannes Film<\/a> Festival in May 2025 ahead of a dedicated Academy Awards campaign. Panahi has previously been arrested and imprisoned numerous times by Iranian authorities, and was once placed on house arrest and banned from filmmaking activities.<\/p>\n

IndieWire learned of the sentencing from a release by Mansour Jahani, an independent film journalist based in Tehran who has regularly covered the legal repercussions Panahi has faced. According to the report, Panahi\u2019s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, said Panahi was also issued a two-year travel ban and a two-year prohibition on social media activity.<\/p>\n

\"Manhood\"<\/a> \"YOU<\/a> <\/p>\n

Nili also stated that Panahi\u2019s bank accounts were frozen last week. This prompted a meeting with the Enforced of Judgments Unit at Iran<\/a>\u2018s Cultural and Media Prosecutor\u2019s Office, which revealed that Panahi had received his new sentence in absentia. According to Nili, authorities claim they could not reach Panahi because he was abroad, but the filmmaker has been in Iran since returning home in March and even appeared before a different branch of the Office in September. Nili says Panahi had not been notified of a hearing date for the case.<\/p>\n

Panahi\u2019s regular legal punishments from Iranian authorities <\/a>have long run parallel to his position as one of the country\u2019s most prominent representatives in global cinema. He won the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival in 2000 for \u201cThe Circle,\u201d and the Golden Bear at Berlinale for \u201cTaxi\u201d in 2015. <\/p>\n

Panahi often produces his work covertly, incorporating his legal restrictions into his technique and plots. In 2010, the Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced him to six years\u2019 imprisonment and a 20-year ban from filmmaking. In December 2025, he was sentenced to one year in prison<\/a> on charges of \u201cpropaganda activity\u201d against Iran. Panahi was in the U.S. to promote \u201cIt Was Just an Accident<\/a>\u201d at the time, leading a campaign that yielded Oscar nominations for Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has received a five-year-and-one-month prison sentence in absentia from Branch 26 of the Tehran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,2332,585,118849,118850,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-816136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-iran","tag-it-was-just-an-accident","tag-jafar-panahi","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}