Two days after going on a hunger strike to protest the conditions of his detention at Tehran’s Evin prison, Iranian warden Jafar Panahi was released on bail on Friday.
Accused of making propaganda against the current regime, the 62-year-old filmmaker was sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison and 20 years of disqualification from directing or writing films, traveling or even speaking in the media. However, he continued to work and live in Iran.
Last July, Jafar Panahi was arrested in a Tehran court, where he had gone to follow the hearing of another award-winning director, Mohammad Rasoulof, arrested a few days earlier and then released on January 7.
Many personalities arrested in Iran
Jafar Panahi won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 for his film The circle. In 2015 she received a Golden Bear in Berlin for Tehran Taxi and, in 2018, he won Best Screenplay for three faces at the Cannes Film Festival.
The director’s last film, no bears, which, like most of his recent work, presents him directly, was screened in 2022 at the Venice Film Festival when he was already in prison. The film won the Special Jury Prize.
Movie personalities are among thousands arrested in Iran in the crackdown on protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman arrested for allegedly violating a strict dress code for women.
Actress Taraneh Alidoosti, who posted images of herself without an Islamic headscarf, was among those detained before being released in early January after nearly three weeks in detention.
Source: BFM TV
