New Delhi: Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s one-year imprisonment has been upheld in a retrial by the Tehran Revolutionary Court. Panahi was charged with “propaganda activity against the regime” and Judge Iman Afshar rejected the objections raised by Panahi’s legal team and upheld the ruling.
The decision came while Panahi was in Cannes promoting his Palme d’Or-winning film, It Was Just an Accident (2025). He has also been banned from travelling for two years and prohibited from associating with any political movements or social groups opposing the Iranian regime.
“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,” Mostafa Nili, Panahi’s lawyer, said in an interview with Iranian media outlet Emtedad.
Nili added that the ruling can still be challenged through the legal process and noted that an appeal can be filed within 20 days.
This is not the first time Panahi has faced jail time. In July 2022, he was arrested after visiting fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, who had been jailed for expressing their dissent through films.
Following his arrest, Tehran reinstated a six-year prison sentence that had originally been issued in 2010, along with a 20-year ban on filmmaking, house arrest and travel restrictions. The punishment was imposed after he attempted to make a film about a student killed during the Green Movement protests against electoral fraud in 2009. Panahi was released from prison 2023, after he went on a hunger strike.
While under house arrest and banned from filmmaking, Panahi made This Is Not a Film (2011), a documentary co-directed with Mojtaba Mirtahmasb. The film was shot on an iPhone inside Panahi’s home, documenting his daily life and conversations with family members and lawyers regarding his imprisonment.
Reportedly, the film was smuggled to Cannes in 2011 on a flash drive. It later travelled to the New York Film Festival and the 27th Warsaw International Film Festival.
Panahi has remained at the forefront of the Iranian New Wave cinema movement for more than three decades, creating politically charged and revolutionary films that have frequently questioned the regime. His notable works include The Circle (2000), Crimson Gold (2003), Offside (2006), Taxi Tehran (2015), 3 Faces (2018).
(Edited by Janaki Pande)