Filmmaker Jafar Panahi sentenced in Iran to five years in prison in new case

Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi, already imprisoned several times, was sentenced to five years in prison and the confiscation of his property in a new case, local media Emtedad News Agency reported, without specifying the charges.

“The revolutionary court of Tehran sentenced my client to five years and one month in prison and the confiscation of all his movable and immovable property,” declared his lawyer, Me Mostafa Nili, on Tuesday October 27 to the Iranian agency Isna. “The court also imposed a two-year ban on activity on social media, as well as a two-year travel ban,” the source added, without specifying what the accusation was about.

The director was sentenced in December in absentia to a year in prison for "propaganda activities" against the State, a few months after winning the Palme d'Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival for A Simple Accident filmed clandestinely in Iran. The 66-year-old figure of the New Wave of Iranian cinema has already spent two periods in prison. The first time in 2010 for 86 days, then again for seven months between 2022 and 2023. He was released after a hunger strike.

Lawyer Mostafa Nili said he discovered the new conviction after Jafar Panahi told him last week that his bank accounts had been frozen. The lawyer specified that the filmmaker returned to Iran during the war launched at the end of February by Israel and the United States against the Islamic Republic. It is unknown at this stage whether he is still in Iran.