Alongside interpreter Sheida Dayani, filmmaker Jafar Panahi accepts the award for one of the best authentic screenplay on the Gotham Awards in New York on Monday for his movie It Was Simply an Accident.
Mike Coppola/Getty Photographs for The Gotham Movie & Media Institute
conceal caption
toggle caption
Mike Coppola/Getty Photographs 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 evening, the author and director was current when his movie It Was Simply an Accident received massive at New York’s Gotham Awards, which have fun impartial films. Hours earlier, his lawyer shared that Panahi was sentenced in absentia to a 12 months in jail in Iran.
Based on his lawyer, Mostafa Nili, who posted concerning 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 expenses of “propaganda actions towards 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 Pageant 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 standard apply for Iranian filmmakers.
On the Gotham Awards, which many take into account to be the place to begin for awards season, Panahi picked up three main prizes, together with greatest worldwide characteristic and greatest director. In his acceptance speech for greatest authentic screenplay, he devoted the award to “filmmakers who preserve the digicam rolling in silence, with out help, and at occasions risking every part they’ve, solely with their religion in reality and humanity.”
“I hope that this dedication can be thought of a small tribute,” he added, by an interpreter, “to all filmmakers who’ve been disadvantaged of the suitable to see and to be seen, however proceed 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 equivalent 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 latest many years. He’s one among solely 4 administrators to win the very best aggressive prizes on the “massive 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 following era of filmmakers in his residence nation.
