Following a retrial for "propaganda activities against the regime," the Tehran Revolutionary Court upheld Jafar Panahi's one-year prison sentence.
On Sunday, the lawyer for the screenwriter and director of the film "« It was just an accident."» Mostafa Nili announced that Judge Iman Afshari had overruled their objections and upheld the verdict in absentia in its entirety, on the grounds that the film was an "underground and problematic anti-establishment film.".
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«"According to the initial verdict, Panahi was sentenced to one year in prison on charges of propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran," Nili said in an interview with the Iranian newspaper Emtedad.
The sentence, handed down while Panahi was abroad promoting his film, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, also includes a two-year ban on traveling abroad and a ban on membership in political and public organizations.
Nili noted that the decision could be appealed within 20 days.
Panahi has long been targeted by Iranian authorities, who maintain a hard line in the Islamic Republic. Most recently, he spent seven months in Iran's Evin Prison after being arrested in July 2023, when he went to the prison to inquire about the whereabouts of his fellow filmmakers Mohammed Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, who had been arrested a few days earlier.
Days later, it was announced that Iranian authorities had decided to reinstate the six-year sentence originally handed down to Panahi in 2010, as well as the 20-year ban on film production and travel abroad.
The charges and sentence stemmed from his attendance at the funeral of a student shot during the 2009 Green Revolution, as well as his subsequent attempt to make a feature film set against the backdrop of that uprising. Panahi was released from prison in February 2023 after going on hunger strike.
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