Jafar Panahi: The World’s MOST ACCLAIMIMED DISSIDENT FILMMAKER

Jafar Panahi Was Not Born A Dissident Filmmaker. HE NERRIVED TO BECOME ONE. HE HAD The MANTLE OF DISSIDENT ARTIST THRUST UPON HIM The REGIME IN TEHRAN.

In 2009, after Panahi Attached the Funeral of a Student Kilda in the so-called Green Revolution Protes, The Government Banned Him from Leaving the Country. In 2010, Citing his plans to shoot a film with the protes as a backdrop, the government slapped him 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 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 ButaAg as the coen brothers’ True Gritthat year’s Opening Night Film.

Panahi HimSelf Rejects the Label of Political Filmmaker – “In My Definition, A Political Filmmaker Defeners An Ideology Whote Follow It and the Bad OPPOSE IT, IN MY FILMS 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 Integr.

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 Inklude: Jafar Panahi is a Light in the Darkness.

His Latest, It was just an accountPremieres 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 Play Was Directly Inspired by Panahi’s Experiences in Prison, Follows A Released Dissident Who, Thinking HEKING 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, FINING WAYS AROUND EVSTACLE 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 WHERE HAS TO KEEP The CURTAPS DRAWN AT All Times to). For 2015’s TaxiHE 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 SHOTH HIS PREVIUS Two Features, 3 Faces (2018) and No Bears (2022), Starring in Both as A Version of “Famus Famus Film Director Jafar Panahi” with the Storylines that mix and merge fact and fiction.

Panahi Couldn’s Leave Iran, But His Films Got Out. This is not a film Was Smugmed Into Cannes on A USB Stick (Thought, As Legend Has It, Inside A BirthaDay Cake). Closed Curtain Premiered in Berlin, Whore 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 Stoped 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 Theatric Release in Their Submitting Country. From The Circle On, All of Panahi’s Films have been Banned in Iran. The White BalloonPanahi’s DEBUT, WHICH WAS MADE WITH Official Government Support and Got A Theatrical Release, Was Iran’s Oscar Contender for 1996, But Iran’s Cleerics Forbade Panhai Fromai Panah 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. The Ministry Said No.

BRIEFLY, IT LOOKED AS IF No Bears Might Be Panahi’s Last Film. He was arrested and imprison in July 2022 – Authoritities Detanedaned HIM, CITING The ORIGINAL 2010 CONVICtion, After Hent To Inquire About the Arrest of His Friends, Fallow DissidentThe Seed of the Sacred Fig). Buter 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 Convention on a Technical. No More House Arrest, No More Travel Ban. Panahi is Expert to Travel to Cannes to Present It was just an accounthis first time in person at the Festival Since Crimson Gold in 2003.

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, Whore 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-Produters to Submit the Movie for Best International FEATURE CONSIDER.

Panahi Produced It was just an account with french outfit les films pelléas, the team behind justine Triet’s cannes- and oscar-winning Anatomy of aval 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 accountHE 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 Isa Is Like to Make Films and Not To Talk About Them, and I Must Say That I Did Really Enjoy Ity. Maybe we short organize a kind of union of directors from all over the world to ask their governments to ban the NM 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 Ittself. If there are problems or toees with the film, there’s nothing you can do about them.

You Also Worked as A Documentarian, Right? You Filmed Documentaries As A Soldier Durying the Iran-Iraq War.

Jafar Panahi YES, I MADE A FEW DOCUMENTARIES AT BEGINNING OF MY Career, As It Was Good Training for Me. Not all of them were Related to the War. That didn’t Really had to do the War, but It Was Durying The Period of Time In My Life, And I Tink What I Really Learned From Documentaries Was Having To Adance to The CirCum 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 Prepration, You Have React and Be Able to Use Isa 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 Througout 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 have to use this reality and create someting with it. This Approach to Improvisation and Adapting to Reality Is Something i’ve Kept with Me for My Who 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. Durying 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 more and to process to my teachers that i was was worthy of what they teaching me.

Even WHEN I SET OUT to MY FIRST Feature Film, The only Thing That I Had in Mind Was How Nota Down Down My Teachers, How To Show Them that I Understood What is the Tor. I wasn’t through myself. I was just like a Student Who Wanted to Show His Teachers that Had Learned Well and He Had Done A Good Job.

ENDING UP IN CANNES WAS SOMETING 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 suudden, I was casked into this outer worl, not having an Idea whata it all meant.

On the day of the closing ceremony, I had no idea if we wound win someting or not, But I Supped If We Did Win, Someone Wound Tell Us SO in the Morning. SO WHEN BY NOON, NO ONE HAD CALLED ME, I TONOUGHT: “I’V 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 so imbarrased that have to teel me i have won realting, so i have to find a tuxedo and go to the ceremony.

Before We Went on Stage, My Translator Told Me: “You Shouldnn Be Nervouse, Just Say A Few Words, Very Casual.” SO I DID, JUST SAID A FEW WORS, VERY RELAXED, BECAUSE I WASN’T Aware of the Importance of the Sity. THEN I SAW HOW HE LOOKED WHEN HE WAS Translating, and He Was Shaking, His Voice Was Trembling. WHEN WET BACKSTAGE, I ASRED HIM WHAT HAPPENED AND HE SAID: “YOU HAD NO IDEA OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MOMENT, OF THE NOT in theater, You Were Not Aware of What Its 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 filmWHICH WAS SMUGLLLED OUT OF IRAN AND INTO Cannes, in A Cake, Reportedly. How did that work?

The story of the cake is noting but a lie. It has noting to do with me, and I have no iDea whoa said that and how that story started. IT’s ALMOST RIDICULOUS, BECAUSE we just put the Film on a USB and I GAVE the DRIV e to someone who was traweling, he brough the Drive to Cannes and that Was It. I have no idea whoa invented the story of the cake and for what purpos. What Sort of Cake It Was Supped to Be, Whther 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 frely?

YES, I’M AT HOME NOW, AT MY HOME IN TEHRAN. What happled is the court invalidated all the Sentences against me. They Were All Canceled, SO NOW THERE IS NOGAL 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, whon 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 office in ryn, you have to submit your script to the islamic guidance ministry for Approval. This is someting that i cannot do. I don’t even know whoese people are and what legitimacy they have to give me feedback on what i do. I don’t see any point in work 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 and Met there, and Hearing their Stories, Their Backgrounds, The Issues and Dealt With in My Films Were Totally Different. SPEENDING TIME THESE PEOPLE IN PRISON REALLY CHANKED COMTHING IN MY Vision, As A Director. I Remember The Day I was Released from Prison. There Must be Some Footage of Itube. 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 reminded Inside that prison with Those people. Something New Had Orated with Them, and I Just Couldn’t Leave It Begind 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 Inspiraction for this Story. These Scatted Ideas That I Found in Prison Were Always with Me.

Each Time You Come Up with One Idea, With One Inspiration, It Creates It Own Necessities, In Terms of Production, In Terms of Location, In Terms of The Artistic Ambition of a Film. It Really Depends on theme of that Film, for Instance, No Bears Was A Film that was more personal, more introverted, so it really require a figment type of filmmaking, WHEREAS here, because of this story, I had to adjust also. That’s Always How It Is, You Have To Adapt To The Necessities of A Story and Not The Other Way Around.

WHERE DID OF THEME OF THE FILM, ABOUT WHETHER Violence Can Ever Be Justified in Secking 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 was all kinds of people. There were experts, there were Great Sociologists, there Were Brilliant Students, there Were Workers, All TheSe People Together. We Started Organization 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”]Mohamad 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 ord of exercise house. WHEN WHO US OUT ONE HOUR to GO AND EXERCISE, We Started Walking with Him and Listening to His Lectures Durying This Break Time.

So themes in this film are not necessarily only personal; IT isn ‘only about my own struggles, but about all these people that and spent time with, and i shared those experiences with. All these Characters That You See In this Film Were Inspired by Conversations that and Had, Stories That Told Me About, The Violence and The Brutality of The Iranian Government. More than Four Decdes 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.

Your Friend and Fellow Filmmaker Mohamad Rasoulof Fled Iran for European, and Many Iranian Filmmakers Have Chosen Exile Insthead 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 important, Films that were ana.

I must say that all these compatriots of mine have an abity that i don’t have. I’m just complely 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 have to be in paris for Three and a Half MONHS 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 SHOTS SHOULD BE Longer, or Shorter,” and He’d Come Join Me in The Studio and Wei. Problem. In Europe, you can /t work like this. I just feel i don’t belf, and i can’t adapt. I’m not judging Other people who have had to do it. Maybe, if I Were in Their Sity, I would have had no other choice. But for myself, with the experience that i’ve had and with the person that and am, with the capacities and the incapacites that are mine, and just can not leave Iran.

You’ve offen been described as a Political Director, But It’s A Label You Reject. Who?

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 Defeners a Special Ideology, and SOY MAKE A FILM THAT DEFACLE AREEOLOGY Obern 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 Behave Badly, Who You Get To Know Them and Get To Understand A Bit More Deply, Their Attitude and Their Function in the Film, You Seie That Is The System That Makes Them of what. It’s not an individual choice.

This is Really What All My Filmmaking Has Been About. I’ve always be inspired by my environment, and no matter what context, what environment you put me in, this is the one that and 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 some i was in jail. I can be indifferent to my environment. The Environment AROUND ME FEEDS MY IMAGINATION, IS WHAT MAKES ME MAKE FILMS.

SO if you put me in jail, you short expect this output from that experience. In a way, i’m not the one who made this film. I The islamic Republic that Made this film, Because they put me in prison. Maybe Os See This Film, They Will Realize They Shouldn’s Put Artists in Prison. Because What Can You Expect WHEN YOU PUT YOUR Artists in Prison? They Discover, Witness A Reality That Will Then, Of Course, Use As The Material for Their Next Film. Do they expert to put us in prison so that wh. No, i the opaSite. We’ll Make Films that Show What We Saw in Prison, Soy Will Understand, Maybe, That If IF They Want To Stop Making US So Subversive, They Should STOP PUTING US IN JAIL.

What is your addice for filmmakers who Find themselves works by the URKING UPPRIASIVE OR AUTHORITARIAN REGIME?

My Advice Wound Be: Be Yourself. WHEN My Contemporaries and I Started Making Films, Cinema Was Sacred for Us. Nothing Existered 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 and Was Given This Very Heavy Sennce 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 CLUDS IN THE SKY. I immediatally got my camera. I Thought: “This is not someting they 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 a residue some of the Material Aspects of My Craft. But I have the Content, if I have the Subject, if I have the Faith in myself about what I have to say, and can still go on make movies.

There’s No Way they stop you from makeing 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 Woundn’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 of other ways.

I The Same Now. I The Same EveryWhere. If You Are Sure this Is What You Want To Do, Sure How You Want To Express Yourself, That 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.