Alongside interpreter Sheida Dayani, filmmaker Jafar Panahi accepts the award for one of the best unique screenplay on the Gotham Awards in New York on Monday for his movie It Was Simply an Accident.
Mike Coppola/Getty Photos for The Gotham Movie & Media Institute
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Mike Coppola/Getty Photos for The Gotham Movie & Media Institute
The beginning of Hollywood’s awards season has been marked by highs and lows for Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi.
On Monday night time, the author and director was current when his movie It Was Simply an Accident received large at New York’s Gotham Awards, which have fun unbiased motion pictures. Hours earlier, his lawyer shared that Panahi was sentenced in absentia to a 12 months in jail in Iran.
In keeping with his lawyer, Mostafa Nili, who posted in regards to the sentence on X and shared the information with Agence France-Presse, the sentence additionally features a two-year ban on journey from Iran and a prohibition of any affiliation with political teams, on prices of “propaganda activities against the system.” Nili added that Panahi’s authorized group plans to attraction the ruling.
Final month, Panahi toured the U.S. for the primary time to advertise It Was Simply An Accident, which received the Palme d’Or on the Cannes Movie Competition in Could. The movie follows a bunch of ex-prisoners in Iran who take into account looking for revenge on a person they consider to be their former jailer. The worldwide co-production from Iran, France and Luxembourg is France’s submission for greatest worldwide characteristic for the Oscars. It Was Simply An Accident was shot in secret, a typical follow for Iranian filmmakers.
On the Gotham Awards, which many take into account to be the start line for awards season, Panahi picked up three main prizes, together with greatest worldwide characteristic and greatest director. In his acceptance speech for greatest unique screenplay, he devoted the award to “filmmakers who keep the camera rolling in silence, without support, and at times risking everything they have, only with their faith in truth and humanity.”
“I hope that this dedication would be considered a small tribute,” he added, via an interpreter, “to all filmmakers who have been deprived of the right to see and to be seen, but continue to create and to exist.”
Panahi’s sentencing was not his first. The director was beforehand arrested in Iran in 2010, sparking public outcry from filmmaking giants comparable to Martin Scorsese, who denounced the ruling at Cannes that 12 months. Though his sentence in 2010 included a 20-year ban on filmmaking, Panahi continued to make movies in secret, together with two documentaries, This Is Not a Movie (2011) and Taxi (2015), the primary of which was smuggled out of Iran on a USB stick.
In 2022, he was once more arrested after looking for info on the costs towards fellow Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. He was detained for seven months and launched in 2023 after a starvation strike.
Panahi is likely one of the most acclaimed filmmakers to come back out of Iran in current a long time. He’s considered one of solely 4 administrators to win the very best aggressive prizes on the “big three” movie festivals — at Cannes, Venice and Berlin — and is particularly celebrated for his defiance of the Iranian authorities’s censorship. Regardless of his a number of arrests, Panahi has repeatedly said that he cannot see himself leaving Iran for good, and he stays dedicated to creating his movies there and nurturing the subsequent technology of filmmakers in his dwelling nation.
