Iranian court sentences Khan Palme d'Or director Panahi to another prison term

(Johannesburg = Yonhap News) Correspondent Na Confirmation = Jafar Panahi (66), a famous Iranian film director who won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year for his film 'It Was Just an Accident', has reportedly been sentenced to heavy punishment again by an Iranian court.

According to dpa news agency on the 28th, Director Panahi's lawyer Mostafa Nili announced in a local daily that the Tehran Revolutionary Court recently sentenced Director Panahi to 5 years and 1 month in prison in a absentee trial.

The court also reportedly ordered Panahi's assets to be confiscated and a ban on leaving the country and using social media for two years.

Attorney Neely said last week that Bishop Panahi informed him that his bank account had been frozen, and after inquiring with the judiciary, they confirmed that he had been convicted in absentia.

The specific charges applied to this ruling are not yet known.

Director Panahi is a master who has dominated the world's leading film festivals by continuously making films despite all kinds of oppression from the Iranian authorities, including censorship, arrest, house arrest, and ban on leaving the country.

He won the Golden Lion Award at the 2000 Venice Film Festival for 'Circle' and the Golden Bear Award at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival for 'Taxi', and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival last year for 'It Was Just an Accident', becoming the director to sweep the top awards at the world's top three film festivals. Last September, she received the ‘Asian Filmmaker of the Year’ award at the Busan International Film Festival.

However, in Iran, he was arrested and indicted on charges of anti-regime activities and propaganda in 2010 and sentenced to six years in prison and a 20-year ban on film production and travel. The following year, he received a reduced sentence to house arrest. He was imprisoned again in 2022 and released on bail the following year.

It is reported that he was sentenced in absentia last year to one year in prison and a two-year ban on leaving the country on charges of anti-regime propaganda. It was reported that at the time, the court accepted the secretly produced film 'It Was Just an Accident' as the main evidence for the charge.

Director Panahi, who stayed in foreign countries such as the United States at the end of last year to promote the film and attend film festivals, returned to Iran in early April this year, dpa reported.