Jafar Panahi’s One-Year Prison Sentence Upheld In Iran

Following a retrial for his “propaganda activity against the regime,” Tehran Revolutionary Court has upheld Jafar Panahi‘s one-year prison sentence.

On Sunday, the It Was Just An Accident writer/director’s attorney Mostafa Nili announced that Judge Iman Afshari rejected their objections and fully upheld the in-absentia verdict, on the grounds of making an “underground and problematic film against the establishment.”

“Under the initial verdict, Panahi had been sentenced to one year in prison on the charge of engaging in propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Nili said in an interview with Iran’s Emtedad.

The sentence, which came down while Panahi was abroad promoting his Cannes Palme d’Or-winning film, also includes a two-year travel ban, and he’s banned from holding membership with political and social groups.

Nili noted that the ruling can be appealed within 20 days.

Panahi has long been in the crosshairs of Iran’s hardline Islamic Republic authorities. Most recently, he spent seven months in the country’s Evin jail after being arrested in July 2023 when he went to the prison to enquire about the the whereabouts of fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad who had been arrested a few days previously.

It was announced a few days later that the Iranian authorities had decided to reactivate a six-year sentence originally meted out to Panahi in 2010 alongside a 20-year filmmaking and travel ban.

The charges and sentence were connected to his attendance of a funeral in 2009 of a student shot dead in the Green Revolution and his later attempt to shoot a feature set against the backdrop of the uprising. Panahi was released from his latest stint in jail in February 2023 after going on hunger strike.