Palme d'Or-winning Iranian director Jafar Panahi facing five-year prison term in new ruling

Published on 28 October 2026 - 13:53 GMT+1 Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, the Oscar-nominated and Palme d’Or-winning director of It Was Just an Accident, has been sentenced in absentia with a new ruling by a Tehran court. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT According to his lawyer, the five-year, one-month prison sentence also includes the confiscation of all his assets, a ban from engaging in social media activities for two years, and a two-year travel ban. The ruling, issued by Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, was first reported to the online Iranian reformist media outlet Emtedad News Agency. The ruling was handed down without Panahi having been notified of the hearing. The charges underlying the latest conviction have not been publicly clarified. Mostafa Nili, Panahi’s lawyer, shared that the court documents claimed Panahi was abroad and unreachable, despite his return to Iran on 30 March and an appearance before an investigative court in August in connection with a separate case. Panahi, who is currently in Iran, faces three ongoing legal proceedings, according to his lawyer. The latest ruling follows a December 2025 conviction for “propaganda activities against the regime”, which carried a one-year prison sentence and two-year travel ban and was upheld on appeal. Panahi won last year’s Palme d’Or in Cannes for It Was Just An Accident. He was sentenced by Iran’s Revolutionary Court to one year in prison and a two-year travel ban in absentia at the end of 2025. The filmmaker returned to Iran at the end of March after the ceremony for the 98th Academy Awards in which It Was Just An Accident was nominated for Best International Feature Film. Panahi was jailed shortly before making It Was Just An Accident and was only released after going on a hunger strike. He spent 86 days in Iran’s notorious Evin prison in 2022 and 2023 on charges of anti-government activity dating back to 2010 and for demonstrating against the imprisonment of his friend and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. In prison, Panahi met activist and political prisoner Mehdi Mahmoudian. The two collaborated on the screenplay for It Was Just An Accident, a thriller inspired by Panahi’s time in prison. Mahmoudian was re-arrested earlier this year on accusations of “insulting the Supreme Leader” and “propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” Panahi has clashed with the repressive Iranian authorities as far back as 2003, has been imprisoned twice in Iran, and was banned from filmmaking for his anti-regime stance and “propaganda against the state”. He has continued to make films in defiance of the authorities and is best known for films like This Is Not a Film, No Bears and Taxi Tehran, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2015. It Was Just An Accident follows a group of formerly imprisoned Iranians who contemplate whether to exact revenge on a man they believe to be their former jailer and torturer. It serves as an unflinching condemnation of the Islamist Republic’s repression and is a timeless commentary of the sins of state despotism. In our review of It Was Just An Accident, we wrote: “Shot in secret, considering Panahi was not allowed filming permission from the authorities, the result is a taut, tense and tightly scripted drama that surprises due to its deft tonal shifts. (...) It’s a powerfully engrossing work that explores the consequences of torture, the price of revenge and whether mercy is possible, as the characters are rattled by the possibility that fighting violence with violence could dehumanize them further.”