TEHRAN – Dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi has left Iran to visit France for the first time in 14 years, weeks after being released from prison, his lawyer said on Wednesday.
The 62-year-old Iranian director, whose films have won several international awards, was released on bail in early February after nearly seven months of detention in Tehran.
“Having fully served his sentence, Panahi was authorized to leave the country and receive his passport,” his lawyer Saleh Nikbakht told AFP.
On Tuesday evening, Panahi’s wife Tahreh Saidi posted a photo on Instagram of herself and the filmmaker at an airport, both happy to be leaving the country after a 14-year ban.
The lawyer said that Panahi was going to France to meet her daughter.
Panahi was banned from making films and left the Islamic Republic in 2009 after supporting mass protests and making a series of films criticizing the situation in modern Iran.
Iranian director Zafar Panahi with his Silver Berlin Bear award at the 56th Berlinale International Film Festival on February 18, 2006 in Berlin. (AP Photo/Arnd Wiegmann, Poole, File)
This hasn’t stopped him from secretly working in the country, and his 2015 film “Taxi” won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
Arrested in Tehran last July, the director was to serve a six-year prison sentence in 2010 for “propaganda against the system”.
However, in early February Panahi was released two days after going on hunger strike in protest against the conditions of his detention.
“As far as I know, there is no other court case against him,” Nikbakht said.
Panahi went on to scoop the Golden Bear in Berlin as well as winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 for his film “The Circle”. In 2018, he also claimed the Best Screenplay award at Cannes for “Three Faces”.
Panahi’s latest film, “No Bears” — which he himself directs like most of his recent work — was screened at the 2022 Venice Film Festival when the filmmaker was already behind bars. It won the Special Jury Prize.
