CAIRO: Iran has sentenced acclaimed director Jafar Panahi to a year in prison in absentia, even as he received new awards for his latest movie.
The Tehran court also imposed a two-year ban on Panahi leaving Iran after convicting him on charges of “propaganda activities against the system,” his lawyer Mostafa Nili said in a post on X. Nili said he would appeal the ruling.
Word of the sentence came as Panahi was in New York City on Monday evening, receiving three awards at the annual Gotham Awards for his movie “It Was Just an Accident,” which also received the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in September. Panahi did not comment on the sentence, and there was no immediate word if he planned to return to Iran.
Panahi is among the most celebrated of contemporary Iranian directors and has continued making movies despite repeatedly being imprisoned, banned from traveling and put under house arrest by Iranian authorities over the past 20 years. He filmed “It Was Just an Accident” clandestinely in Iran following a seven-month stint in prison that only ended in 2023 once he went on a hunger strike.
He has said he drew from stories of fellow prisoners for the film, a revenge drama in which a group of former prisoners find the man they think could have been their torturer in prison. But because they were blindfolded while jailed, they struggled to be sure.
France has selected the movie as its submission for the Academy Awards.