Jafar Panahi sentenced to six years in jail

The director Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to 6 years’ imprisonment by the Iranian judiciary, who're looking for to implement a beforehand handed-down sentence.

Panahi, who has gained the highest prizes on the Venice and Berlin movie festivals, and is the director of movies together with The Circle, The White Balloon, Crimson Gold, Taxi and This Is Not a Movie, is considered one of three film-makers arrested in Tehran in lower than per week.

Panahi was detained on 11 July on the prosecutors’ workplace, which he visited together with attorneys and colleagues to ask after the wellbeing and whereabouts of fellow Iranian film-makers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad, who had been detained three days earlier than.

He and Rasoulof had been beforehand arrested in 2010 for “propaganda towards the system”, critiquing the federal government of their movies and at protests. He was sentenced to 6 years in jail, of which he served two months earlier than being granted a conditional launch that was revocable.

He was barred from leaving Iran and making movies and has largely been confined to his own residence for the previous 12 years.

The movies Panahi has revamped that interval tried to search out loopholes in these restrictions.

“Panahi had been sentenced in 2010 to a complete of six years in jail,” judiciary spokesperson Massoud Setayeshi instructed reporters on Tuesday, “and due to this fact he was entered to the detention centre of Evin to serve his sentence there”.

The arrests have been broadly criticised by movie our bodies internationally.

The Worldwide Coalition for Filmmakers at Danger (ICFR) revealed an open letter on Friday (15 July) to protest towards the wave of arrests among the many film-making and creative communities in Tehran.

The Cannes movie pageant issued an announcement saying it “strongly condemns these arrests in addition to the wave of repression clearly in progress in Iran towards its artists. The pageant requires the quick launch of Mohammad Rasoulof, Mostafa Aleahmad and Jafar Panahi.”