Jafar Panahi awaits an imminent court ruling on his release from jail
A decision on Jafar Panahi’s release from prison in Iran is imminent after the supreme court overturned the conviction that led to the incarceration of the filmmaker in 2022.
Taking to Instagram, Panahi’s wife, Tahereh Saeedi, stated that lawyers have managed to overturn the six-year sentence issued for ‘propaganda against the system’ in 2010. With the sentence now obsolete, the case has been sent to an Iranian court of appeals. “Last week we were informed that Jafar will be out in a week,” she wrote on the social media platform, “a week passed by and Jafar is still not with us”.
Known as one of the greatest Iranian filmmakers of all time, Panahi is responsible for such movies as No Bears, This Is Not a Film and Taxi Tehran. Arrested last July in Tehran during the country’s crackdown on liberal voices, the filmmaker missed the chance to appear at the Venice Film Festival, where his film No Bears won the Special Jury Prize.
Releasing a statement from prison at Venice Film Festival 2022, he wrote: “We are filmmakers, for us to live is to create…The work we create is not commissioned [so] some of our governments see us as criminals … some [filmmakers] were banned from making films, others were forced into exile or reduced to isolation. And yet, the hope of creating again is a reason for existence”.
More recently, Panahi’s lawyer, Saleh Nikhbakht, told the French news publication AFP that according to Iranian law, “he should immediately be released on bail and his case reviewed again”.
Still, many fear that the government will keep the filmmaker behind bars, with Saeedi’s Instagram post further stating: “The liberation of Jafar is in total accordance of their own laws…But they [Iranian authorities] are above the law; without any respect for the law”.
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