The filmmaker, awarded many occasions and imprisoned since July, protests against the conditions of his detention in Evin prison.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
“Today, like many people trapped in Iran, I have no choice but to protest against this inhuman behavior with what I have most dear: my life.”
In a statement published Thursday, February 2 by his wife, the Iranian director Jafar Panahi, imprisoned in Tehran for six months, explains that he started a hunger strike to protest against the conditions of his detention.
“I will refuse to eat and drink and take any medication until my release,” said the filmmaker, whose hunger strike began 1 er February.
“I will stay in this state until, perhaps, my lifeless body is released from prison.”
Jafar Panahi, whose films were awarded at several European film festivals, was arrested on July 11, 2022 even before the start of the wave of protest actions that has been shaking the Iranian regime since September. Aged 62, the director is forced to serve a sentence of six years in prison pronounced in 2010 for “propaganda against the system”.
a hope of liberation
On October 15, the Supreme Court annulled the conviction and ordered a new trial, leaving the hope of liberation from his lawyers, but he remains detained in Evin prison in Tehran where a fire and clashes had provoked Chaos in October 2022.
Jafar Panahi won a golden lion at the Venice Mostra in 2000 for his film Le Cercle. In 2015, he was awarded a gold bear in Berlin for Taxi Tehran and, in 2018, he won the prize for the best scenario for three faces at the Cannes Film Festival. on Twitter , this cinema institution “Reaffirms it All his support by calling, like many artists, festivals and organizations around the world, to his immediate release “.
“This cry for freedom collectively obliges us” underlined the ARP and the SRF, two collectives of French filmmakers. “We are in solidarity with the Iranians who fight for their rights, condemn this arrest and call on its release”, wrote the Berlin International Film Festival on Twitter .
The latest film by Jafar Panahi, none bear, which, like most of his recent works, stages it directly, was screened in 2022 at the Venice Mostra when he was already imprisoned. The film won the Special Jury Prize.
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Son arrest in July intervened after That he had attended the court hearing another director, Mohammad Rasoulof, arrested a few days earlier. The latter was released from prison on January 7 after benefiting from a two -week permission for health reasons. 2>
the activist Farhad Meysami on the hunger also 2>
Personalities in the world of cinema are among the thousands of people arrested in Iran as part of the repression of the demonstrations triggered by the death in detention of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish arrested for having allegedly violated the strict dress code imposed Women’s. Actress Taraneh Alidoosti, who broadcast images of her not wearing an Islamic sail, was one of the prisoners before being released in early January after almost three weeks of detention.
Sign of the dangers incurred by hunger strikers, human rights activists made public on Thursday, photos of the emaciated body of the activist and doctor Farhad Meysami, sentenced to five years in prison and who refuses to Eating.