The World’s Most Acclaimed Dissident Filmmaker

Jafar Panahi was not born a dissident filmmaker. He never strived to become one. He had the mantle of dissident artist thrust upon him by the regime in Tehran.

In 2009, after Panahi attended the funeral of a student killed in the so-called Green Revolution protests, the government banned him from leaving the country. In 2010, citing his plans to shoot a film with the protests as a backdrop, the government slapped him with a 20-year ban on travel and filmmaking along with a six-year suspended prison sentence for “propaganda against the system.”

Panahi was famous in international art house circles before the ban — The White Balloon (1995) won Cannes’ Camera d’Or for best first feature, The Circle (2000) earned Venice’s Golden Lion for best film — but it was after the ban that the mainstream press took notice.

When the 2011 Berlin Film Festival staged a symbolic protest, leaving a seat empty for Panahi, who was an official member of the Berlinale jury but was barred from attending, it got nearly as much media coverage as the Coen brothers’ True Grit, that year’s opening night film.

Panahi himself rejects the label of political filmmaker — “in my definition, a political filmmaker defends an ideology where the good follow it and the bad oppose it…in my films, even those who behave badly are shaped by the system, not personal choice” — but it is undeniable that the 64-year-old Iranian director has become a global symbol of political resistance and artistic integrity.

For any artist threatened with censorship by an authoritarian regime — a group that, since the election of Donald Trump in November, could be said to include progressive voices in Hollywood — every new film from Jafar Panahi is a light in the darkness.

His latest, It Was Just an Accident, premieres May 20 in competition in Cannes. MK2 Films is handling world sales. It was shot in secret, like every one of Panahi’s films since 2010. The plot was directly inspired by Panahi’s experiences in prison, follows a released dissident who, thinking he recognizes one of his prison torturers, sets out for vengeance. But soon he begins to question if more violence is the right way to bring about justice.

The director has become an expert in clandestine moviemaking, finding ways around every obstacle the state has thrown at him. In 2010, after being placed under house arrest, he made the documentary essay This Is Not a Film (2011), shooting himself (and his pet iguana) in his living room on his iPhone. He filmed 2013’s Closed Curtain at his summer home, going allegorical with the story of a screenwriter holed up in a house where he has to keep the curtains drawn at all times (conveniently preventing the authorities from seeing what Panahi was up to). For 2015’s Taxi, he turned his car into a mobile studio, getting behind the wheel and driving around Tehran, interacting with a cross-section of Iranian society. The director used the sparsely populated countryside for cover to shoot his previous two features, 3 Faces (2018) and No Bears (2022), starring in both as a version of “famous film director Jafar Panahi” with storylines that mix and merge fact and fiction.

Panahi couldn’t leave Iran, but his films got out. This Is Not a Film was smuggled into Cannes on a USB stick (though not, as legend has it, inside a birthday cake). Closed Curtain premiered in Berlin, where it won best screenplay. Taxi also went to Berlin and won the Golden Bear. 3 Faces took the best screenplay in Cannes, No Bears a special jury prize in Venice.

While it hasn’t stopped him from making movies, the Iranian government has prevented Panahi’s films from making it to the Oscars. Academy rules require the best international feature contenders to have a theatrical release in their submitting country. From The Circle on, all of Panahi’s films have been banned in Iran. The White Balloon, Panahi’s debut, which was made with official government support and got a theatrical release, was Iran’s Oscar contender for 1996, but Iran’s clerics forbade Panahi from doing interviews with U.S. journalists to promote the film, and it was not nominated.

In 2006, Sony Pictures Classics tried to get Offside nominated and even wrote a letter to Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, asking them to lift the ban to give the film a one-week release to qualify it for an Oscar campaign. The ministry said no.

Briefly, it looked as if No Bears might be Panahi’s last film. He was arrested and imprisoned in July 2022 — authorities detained him, citing the original 2010 conviction, after he went to inquire about the arrest of his friend, fellow dissident director Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig). But after six months in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, Panahi was released in February 2023 following a hunger strike.

Amazingly, Iran’s Supreme Court ruled in Panahi’s favor, quashing the 2010 conviction on a technicality. No more house arrest, no more travel ban. Panahi is expected to travel to Cannes to present It Was Just an Accident, his first time in person at the festival since Crimson Gold in 2003. (That movie, about an ex-soldier with PTSD who tries to rob a jewelry store, won the festival’s Un Certain Regard prize.)

And that Oscar might still be on the table. Last year, Panahi’s friend Rasoulof, after fleeing Iran to exile in Germany, brought The Seed of the Sacred Fig to Cannes, where it won a special jury prize. Rasoulof then successfully bypassed the mullahs on the way to an Academy Award nomination by getting his film’s German co-producers to submit the movie for best international feature consideration.

Panahi produced It Was Just an Accident with French outfit Les Films Pelléas, the team behind Justine Triet’s Cannes- and Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall and a company that knows a thing or two about an Academy Awards campaign.

In his first interview in 15 years, Panahi spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about talks prison and censorship, why he plans to stay in Iran, and how, in his new film It Was Just an Accident, he turns oppression into inspiration.

Thank you so much for doing this interview – you’re first in 15 years! I have to ask: Did you enjoy it, a little bit, not having to talk to journalists about your films?

Jafar Panahi Well, as a matter of fact, this experience was given to me to see what it’s like to make films and not to talk about them, and I must say that I did really enjoy it. Maybe we should organize a kind of union of directors from all over the world to ask their governments to ban them from speaking about their films. Because you know, once you’ve made a film, the film is there, so it doesn’t matter what you say about it. The film exists by itself. If there are problems or issues with the film, there’s nothing you can do about them.

You also worked as a documentarian, right? You filmed documentaries as a soldier during the Iran-Iraq War.

Jafar Panahi Yes, I made a few documentaries at the beginning of my career, as it was good training for me. Not all of them were related to the war. That didn’t really have to do with the war, but it was during this period of time in my life, and I think what I really learned from documentaries was having to adjust to the circumstances around you, because you have no idea of what is going to happen. You have to capture what is unfolding in front of you, the material of your film, with no preparation, you have really react and be able to use what reality gives you. It was extremely useful for me afterwards in all my filmmaking. I also directed a TV program about short film filmmakers and festivals held throughout Iran in different towns and cities. And every time we went to one of these towns we did not know what was going to happen. But we had to use this reality and create something with it. This approach to improvisation and adapting to reality is something I’ve kept with me for my whole career.

Your first feature, The White Balloon (1995) premiered at Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. It was your first time at the festival, your first time outside Iran. What’s your strongest memory from that experience?

Jafar Panahi Well, you know, I had no idea where I was going and what was happening to me. During my years at university, I was this very hard-working, restless student. I wanted to do my best to learn as much as possible. I was just running from one shoot to the other, trying to learn more and to prove to my teachers that I was worthy of what they were teaching me.

Even when I set out to do my first feature film, the only thing that I had in mind was how not to let down my teachers, how to show them that I understood what they taught me, that I was good enough for them. I wasn’t thinking about myself. I was just like a student who wanted to show his teachers that he had learned well and he had done a good job.

Ending up in Cannes was something so unexpected, I really wasn’t ready for it. Back then, he media was not like nowadays. We didn’t get so much information from outside. I had no idea what kind of event Cannes was. I was so focused on my work and trying hard to do the best film possible and all of a sudden, I was cast into this other world, not having any idea what it all meant.

On the day of the closing ceremony, I had no idea if we would win something or not, but I supposed if we did win, someone would tell us so in the morning. So when by noon, no one had called me, I thought: “I’ve got today off.” I can go wander around Cannes. I met my friend, who was also my translator, and he said, “Are you ready? You have a tuxedo for tonight?” I said: “No, I don’t have a tuxedo. I’d rather walk around and sightsee.’ Finally, they were so embarrassed that they had to tell me I had won something, so I had to find a tuxedo and go to the ceremony.

Before we went on stage, my translator told me: “You shouldn’t be nervous, just say a few words, very casual.” So I did, just said a few words, very relaxed, because I wasn’t aware of the importance of the situation. Then I saw how he looked when he was translating, and he was shaking, his voice was trembling. When we went backstage, I asked him what happened and he said: “You had no idea of the importance of the moment, of the people in the theater, you were not aware of what this means.

Even after you were banned from filmmaking, you continued to make movies and they continued to get shown in Cannes. Including This is Not a Film, which was smuggled out of Iran and into Cannes, in a cake, reportedly. How did that work?

The story of the cake is nothing but a lie. It has nothing to do with me, and I have no idea who said that and how that story started. It’s almost ridiculous, because we just put the film on a USB and I gave the drive to someone who was traveling, he brought the drive to Cannes and that was it. I have no idea who invented the story of the cake and for what purpose. What sort of cake it was supposed to be, whether the drive was inside the cake, on the cake or wherever, no idea. But I had nothing to do with that story.

What is your actual legal status now following the last court ruling? Are you able to move and work freely?

Yes, I’m at home now, at my home in Tehran. What happened is the court invalidated all the sentences against me. They were all canceled, so now there is no legal case against me, and I have no legal issues. I’ve been able to travel a few times. My first trip outside was to France to visit my former distributor, with whom I’ve worked for years, Hengameh Panahi, because she was unwell. I came a couple of times to visit her and to be with my children and family. And, unfortunately, when Hengameh passed away [in 2023], I came back for her burial.

Professionally, I am not banned anymore, I’m not forbidden to work as I used to be. But to make a film in the official way in Iran, you have to submit your script to the Islamic Guidance Ministry for approval. This is something that I cannot do. I don’t even know who these people are and what legitimacy they have to give me feedback on what I do. I don’t see any point in working in that system. So I didn’t ask for permission with this movie. I made another clandestine film. Another film undercover. I did the film in my own way. Again.

How did your experience in prison shape this film?

Before going to jail and before getting to know the people that I met there, and hearing their stories, their backgrounds, the issues I dealt with in my films were totally different. Spending time with these people in prison really changed something in my vision, as a director. I remember the day I was released from prison. There must be some footage of it on YouTube. I came out of prison, and my friends and family were there to welcome me, but I had such mixed feelings. I didn’t know if I should be happy. How could I leave behind all these people who were still there and cut off from them?

There was something very ambivalent that I felt at the moment, and I kept feeling it after that. A part of me remained inside that prison with those people. Something new had opened with them, and I just couldn’t leave it behind me and go back to the kind of life that I had before prison. It’s really in this context, with this new inspiration, with this new commitment that I had felt in prison, that I had the idea, the inspiration for this story. These scattered ideas that I found in prison were always with me.

Each time you come up with one idea, with one inspiration, it creates its own necessities, in terms of production, in terms of location, in terms of the artistic ambition of a film. It really depends on the theme of that film, for instance, No Bears was a film that was more personal, more introverted, so it really required a different type of filmmaking, whereas here, because of this story, I had to adjust also the kind of production that it needed. That’s always how it is, you have to adapt to the necessities of a story and not the other way around.

Where did the theme of the film, about whether violence can ever be justified in seeking justice, come from?

It all really came from prison, this reflection about violence or non-violence. What’s really remarkable in prison is the diversity of the kind of people that you learn to sit with and talk. There were all kinds of people. There were experts, there were great sociologists, there were brilliant students, there were workers, all these people together. We started organizing lectures. There was this great sociologist called Professor Saeed Madani [sentenced to 9 years in 2022 for “formation and management of anti-government groups” and “conspiring to commit crimes against the country’s security”], Mohammad Rasoulof and I. We asked Madani to organize lectures for us. Whatever prisoner wanted to come and listen to him. At some point, they banned this. So we would take advantage of our exercise hour. When they took us out for one hour to go and exercise, we started walking with him and listening to his lectures during this break time.

So the themes in this film are not necessarily only personal; it isn’t only about my own struggles, but about all these people that I spent time with, and I shared these experiences with. All these characters that you see in this film were inspired by conversations that I had, stories that they told me about, the violence and the brutality of the Iranian government with prisoners, violence that has been ongoing for more than four decades now. No matter what’s going on in the here and now, we all have this common history. We hear the stories we share with our compatriots, and these issues, about how we have to react to this brutality, are issues we all have to reflect on.

Your friend and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof fled Iran for Europe, and many Iranian filmmakers have chosen exile instead of living under the current regime. Could you imagine leaving your country to work in exile?

Now there are Iranian artists, Iranian directors all over the world. They have had to leave their homeland and adapt to another society, and some of them have been able to create elsewhere and make films that are important, films that are being seen and celebrated.

I must say that all these compatriots of mine have an ability that I don’t have. I’m just completely incapable of adjusting to another society other than my own. 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. I’m just not able to survive and adapt to a new environment, to a new society. I had to be in Paris for three and a half months for the post-production of this film, and I thought I was going to die. It was so difficult for me, professionally and personally.

First of all, outside Iran, I get bored immediately. I feel I need to go back home. And professionally, it is completely different. In Iran, at 2 am, I can call a colleague or collaborator, and say: “I think one of our shots should be longer, or shorter,” and he’d come join me in the studio and we’d work together all night until we solve the problem. In Europe, you can’t work like this. I just feel I don’t belong, and I can’t adapt. I’m not judging other people who have had to do it. Maybe, if I were in their situation, I would have had no other choice. But for myself, with the experience that I’ve had and with the person that I am, with the capacities and the incapacities that are mine, I just can not leave Iran.

You’ve often been described as a political director, but it’s a label you reject. Why?

I see myself as a social director, and for me, it’s quite the opposite, extremely different, from being a political director. In my definition, a political filmmaker is somebody who belongs to a party and who defends a specific ideology, and so they make a film that defends their ideology, in which the good people are the people who observe and respect this ideology, and the bad people are those who are against them. Whereas in my films, there’s no bad guy. There’s nobody who’s condemned and who is seen only in a negative way. Even the people who behave badly, when you get to know them and get to understand a bit more deeply, their attitude and their function in the film, you see that it’s a system that makes them what they are. It’s not an individual choice.

This is really what all my filmmaking has been about. I’ve always been inspired by my environment, and no matter what context, what environment you put me in, this is the one that I will depict and show in the films that I make. So when they put me in jail, it’s absolutely normal that I start telling the stories that I was exposed to when I was in jail. I can’t be indifferent to my environment. The environment around me feeds my imagination, it’s what makes me make films.

So if you put me in jail, you should expect this output from that experience. In a way, I’m not the one who made this film. It’s the Islamic Republic that made this film, because they put me in prison. Maybe once they see this film, they will realize they shouldn’t put artists in prison. Because what can you expect when you put your artists in prison? They discover, witness a reality that they will then, of course, use as the material for their next film. Do they expect to put us in prison so that when we come out, we are brainwashed, and we start making the films that they want? No, it’s the opposite. We’ll make films that show what we saw in prison, so they will understand, maybe, that if they want to stop making us so subversive, they should stop putting us in jail.

What is your advice for filmmakers who find themselves working under an oppressive or authoritarian regime?

My advice would be: Be yourself. When my contemporaries and I started making films, cinema was sacred for us. Nothing existed out of this choice, this path that we saw for ourselves. After your first couple of films, you realize this is your path in life. This is your passion, and nothing can stop you. This is really what I felt throughout my career.

I remember just before I was given this very heavy sentence of 20 years, banned from making films and from traveling, and I thought: “What will I do now”? For a little while, I was really upset. Then, I remember, I went to my window, I looked up and I saw these beautiful clouds in the sky. I immediately got my camera. I thought: “This is not something they can take away from me, I can still take pictures of the clouds.” I did that for two years. The photos were exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. After that, I realized: What do I have? I don’t have my big camera. I don’t have my crew. They can take away some of the material aspects of my craft. But if I have the content, if I have the subject, if I have the faith in myself about what I have to say, I can still go on making movies.

There’s no way they can stop you from making films. You just have to find different ways of telling the stories. Of course, a film like Taxi couldn’t have been made 10 years before because technically it wouldn’t have been possible. But that was the solution that I found at that moment. I’m sure that before that, I would have found other ways.

It’s the same now. It’s the same everywhere. If you are sure this is what you want to do, sure how you want to express yourself, that the way you see yourself on this earth is as a filmmaker, then you will find a way. If cinema is really what is sacred for you, what gives sense to your life, then no regime, no censorship, no authoritarian system can stop you.