Jafar PanahiHigh reward, high riskThe award-winning Iranian filmmaker was ordered to serve six years in prison

Srinivasan Ramani

Illustration: Sreejith R kumar

Celebrated Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was ordered to serve a six-year prison term last week after visiting the Evin prison in Tehran to ask about one of two fellow film directors — Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-e Ahmad — who had been arrested recently for critical social media posts about the collapse of a 10-storey building in Abadan in May.

The Evin prison is notorious as a site that houses Iran’s prominent political dissidents, including intellectuals. Mr. Panahi’s wife, Tahereh Saidi told BBC Persian that he was promptly arrested by prison guards at the time of his visit, after being told that he had an outstanding prison sentence to serve. Ms. Saidi went on to denounce his arrest as a “kidnapping”.

The arrest was a fallout of Mr. Panahi’s support for the Green wave movement that occurred following the controversial re-election of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. The election was termed fraudulent by protesters, including Mr. Panahi and other filmmakers such as Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Mr. Rasoulof, who believed that the rightful winner was the reformist politician Mir-Hossein Mousavi. After a period of sustained street protests that began non-violently, the movement petered out following severe state repression even as supporters sought to use the electoral process to gain victories for reformists. Originally sentenced to prison for supporting the anti-regime demonstrations in 2010, the director later received a conditional release from house arrest that allowed him to travel freely within Iran but banned him from directing or making any movies for 20 years. 

Mr. Panahi’s work in recent years can only be characterised as “high risk, high rewards”. Following his conditional release, Mr. Panahi continued to make films with limited resources, defying the ban. This is not a Film, made in 2011, was an autobiographical documentary that detailed his life in house arrest and was viewed in the Cannes film festival in the same year after the film was smuggled out of Iran on a flash drive hidden inside a birthday cake. Closed Curtain (pardeh in Persian), made in 2013, was secretly shot in Mr. Panahi’s vacation home on the Caspian Sea, made as a “docufiction” that combines autobiographical notes showing Mr. Panahi in a despondent mood, while trapped in his house with a fictional plot as well. This film premiered in the Berlin International Film Festival in 2013 and also received the Silver Bear for best script. Another semi-autobiographical “docufiction” Taxi, followed in 2015, and won the Golden Bear at Berlin besides critical acclaim across the world even as it was denounced by Iranian conservatives.

International acclaim notwithstanding, these subversive films (made in the face of a ban) were a break from Mr. Panahi’s method and emphasis that placed him among the best of the Iranian new wave filmmaker generation, which included other auteurs such as Abbas Kiarostami (Mr. Panahi worked as an assistant director with him), Mr. Makhmalbaf (some include his daughter Samira as one as well), Majid Majidi, Asghar Farhadi, among others.

Neo-realism

Most of the films from this generation of directors came under the rubric of neo-realism but with “Iranian characteristics” — combining a “high degree of reflexivity and [allegorical] symbolism” to work within the framework of the censorious regime under the Islamic Republic, to quote a paper by Trent Griffiths in 2015.

Mr. Panahi’s initial work fitted this framework before becoming increasingly political without directly referencing the political system. The poignant The Circle (Dayereh in Persian), made in 2000, depicts the lives of four Iranian women living under the restrictions of Islamic law. The humane film Offside (2006) tells the story of a group of girls who are football enthusiasts and seek to watch a game — Iranian women are not allowed in stadiums. His other award-winning films include Crimson Gold (2003).

With social unrest and protests increasing in Iran in recent years independent filmmaking has become an even more difficult proposition, with the regime increasing its hostility to anything critical of the system. It is this milieu that has chosen not to spare even the most celebrated of Iranian directors from arrest and persecution. 

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