The multipressed director was released on bail on February 3, but many other intellectuals and opponents are always imprisoned.
by Clarisse Fabre
In the aftermath of the announcement of his hunger strike, the Iranian filmmaker Multipressed Jafar Panahi, 62, was released from Evin prison in Tehran, Friday, February 3. The news aroused immense relief in the cinema world, very mobilized since its arrest, on July 11, 2022. The director of the circle, golden lion of the Venice Mostra in 2000, will have spent more than two hundred days behind the bars. In his letter announcing his hunger strike, he explained: “I will refuse to eat and drink, and take any medication until my release (…). I will stay in this state until, perhaps , my lifeless body is released from prison. “
Condemned in 2010, for “propaganda against the regime”, for having participated in the protest movement against the re -election of the ultra -conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of the Islamic Republic, Jafar Panahi had been detained for two months before be placed in parole. A sentence of ban on travel, to express themselves in the media and to shoot films for twenty years had also been pronounced against him, which did not prevent him from making this is not a film (2011) , Taxi Tehéran (2015), gold bear in Berlin, and three faces (2018), scenario prize in Cannes.
On July 11, 2022, Jafar Panahi was arrested when he had just arrived at the Tehran prosecutor’s office, to inquire about the fate of filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa al-Ahmad, both arrested on July 8, then Imprisoned, for their “anti -revolutionary” activism. Panahi found himself in turn in detention, forced to have to serve his sentence, pronounced in 2010. On October 15, 2022, the Supreme Court canceled this conviction, ordering a new trial – without having it released.
“We are very happy that Jafar Panahi came out of prison, said Iranian filmmaker Mitra Farahani, author of Fifi howls with joy (2013) and a Friday, Robinson (2022), who now lives in France. Releasing, the Iranian power wants to calm the game: he knows how far he can go with this filmmaker who has such a aura. But the case of Panahi is very different from all the other prisoners whose name we do not know … “The Director quotes the case of the doctor and activist Farhad Meysami, sentenced to five years in prison, in 2018, for having criticized the port of the compulsory hijab.
You have 48.89% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.