Jafar Panahi Sentenced to a Year in Prison by Iranian Government

More than seven months after acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his latest film, It Was Just an Accident, and one day after Panahi’s U.S. tour to support the film wrapped, the Iranian government has sentenced him to prison again. According to a December 1 social-media post from Panahi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, the Islamic Revolutionary Court has sentenced Panahi to one year in prison, as well as issuing a two-year ban on leaving the country and barring Panahi from joining any “political and social groups or factions for propaganda activities against the regime.” Panahi plans to appeal, Nili said.

For nearly his entire professional career, Panahi has been facing off against the Iranian government and criticizing it through themes of social injustice in his films; in turn, it has increasingly punished him for his work. He has been arrested three times and jailed twice, with his longest sentence to date being six months in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison from July 2022 to February 2023. After Panahi’s release, the Iranian government also lifted the 20-year travel ban it had placed on him in 2010, which had restricted him from leaving the country. However, a ban on making films hadn’t stopped Panahi, who in the years between his 2010 and 2022 arrests made a number of movies that were smuggled out of the country and awarded internationally, including the 2011 documentary This Is Not a Film and 2023’s meta experiment No Bears.

It Was Just an Accident was also made in secret and was inspired by Panahi’s latest stint in Evin. The film follows a group of former prisoners who believe they have found their prison torturer and argue about what to do with the man. Acquired by Neon, the film has played around the world at various festivals as the distributor has positioned it for an Oscars run. At those festivals, Panahi has made statements about the Iranian government and about his refusal to let the regime dictate his personal and professional life. “Perhaps if they had not put me in prison, this film would never have been made,” he said at the Toronto International Film Festival 2025. “So I was not the person who made this film. It was the Islamic Republic who made this film, and I’d like to congratulate them.”

Panahi is a front-runner in various Oscars categories and is working on a short film inspired by his time promoting Accident in the United States. Nili told French media that Panahi is currently not in Iran but did not state whether Panahi would return; Panahi has previously said that he refuses to live in exile and would never leave Iran permanently. “Whenever I leave Iran, I realize I’m not able to survive in another country, to live there, to work there, or make a film there,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in May. The filmmaker does have residency status in France and lives there part time. Per THR, Panahi is expected to attend the Gotham Awards on December 1, where he is nominated for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature.