Dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, often imprisoned in his home country and for years banned from traveling abroad, on May 24 won the Palme d'Or, the top award at the Cannes Film Festival in France.
It was the second year in a row that an Iranian filmmaker has been in the spotlight at Cannes following the appearance in 2024 of director Mohammad Rasoulof -- who had to escape his home country to be able to appear at the festival for a screening of one of his films.
Panahi, 64 -- who has clandestinely made a number of films in Iran in recent years -- won this year’s prestigious award for his film titled It Was Just An Accident, a thriller about a group of former prisoners in Iran who abduct the guard allegedly responsible for torturing them.
He put out a call for freedom and unity in his home country, which has long been assailed by international groups for human rights violations and which is suffering from crippling economic sanctions imposed by the West.
“I have a request from all groups of people of all faiths in my country and abroad, all Iranians who are striving for freedom, for human dignity, and for democracy,” he said on accepting the award amid a rousing standing ovation from the audience.
“Put aside all differences. What is important now is the integrity of our country. We hope we will achieve freedom as soon as possible.”
“No one should dare tell us what kind of clothes we should wear, what we should or shouldn’t do. Cinema is a society. Nobody is entitled to tell what we should do or refrain from doing,” he said.
In April 2023, Panahi left Iran for the first time in 14 years after completing a prison sentence for his activism that allowed for the lifting of a travel ban imposed by the country's authorities.
Days prior to his arrest in July 2022, Panahi had joined a group of more than 300 Iranian filmmakers in publishing an open letter calling on the security forces to "lay down their arms" in the face of public outrage over "corruption, theft, inefficiency, and repression" following the violent crackdown against people protesting a building collapse that killed 41 people in the city of Abadan.
Those protests were overtaken by a wave of unrest following the September 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody for allegedly violating the country's head-scarf law.
As he was announced winner of the prestigious Cannes award, jury president Juliette Binoche -- who in 2010 in Cannes held up Panahi's name to honor the filmmaker when he was under house arrest -- cheered along with the crowd.
Panahi has now won Cannes' Palme d'Or, Venice's Golden Lion (for The Circle), and Berlin's Golden Bear (for Taxi) -- one of only four filmmakers to have accomplished that feat.
A year ago, Rasoulof fled Iran to attend the premiere of his film in Cannes. He eventually resettled in Germany.
Panahi, however, vowed to return to Tehran.
Asked if he was worried about going back, Panahi said: "Not at all. Tomorrow we are leaving [for Iran]."
"Win or not, I was going to go back either way. Don't be afraid of challenges," he said.
