Last September, when he won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Mostra, extraordinary movie, ‘Los osos no empty’, currently released in Spain, Jafar Panahi did not receive the award personally. He had a compelling reason: He spent 52 days behind bars.He is accused of collaborating with groups that oppose Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s authority to undermine the security of the Iranian state.
He was detained on 11 July in the same prison – the Evin prison in Tehran, the usual place of detention for political prisoners. arrested while protesting the imprisonment of filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmadwere sent there three days ago to raise their voices. Almost seven months later, on February 1st, Panahi went on a hunger strike and made a press statement. reassured by his wife and son’s Instagram accounts. Do this to protest the “illegal and inhumane” treatment of the Islamic Republic’s judiciary and security forces. Maybe I will continue like this until my lifeless body is released from prison.” He was released two days later, but he probably still doesn’t feel free.
According to the country’s authorities, jailing Panahi meant executing the sentence handed down to him at the end of 2010, when he was already an internationally renowned filmmaker and was seen as a serious danger in his country; In the last ten years, after all, it had established itself as: The scourge of the cruel Iranian theocracy thanks to fictions like ‘The Circle’ (2000)The overwhelming condemnation of the women who won the Golden Lion at the Venice Mostra, an attack on the law banning the female public from participating in sporting events, and the dystopian logic that governs life in the country in ‘Fuera de juego’ (2006), a satire against women.
That year, probably because of his popular support for presidential candidate Mir Hosein Mousavi and the social movement known as the Green Revolution.He was found guilty of attacking national security and making propaganda against the Islamic regime.He was sentenced to 20 years of filmmaking, screenwriting and travel ban, in addition to a 6-year prison sentence. You condemn not only me, but all cinema in Iran, a cinema that does not surrender to power and money, that tries to honestly reflect the society that inspired it, to reflect the discontent of the public and to reach humanity,” he said. announced before he was sentenced.
The country’s Supreme Court currently considers the prison sentence to have been served for several years, but the security services refuse to recognize the decision.
Not an isolated case
Of course, Panahi is not an isolated case. Actually, freedom of expression for artists Iranian It has been restricted since the 1979 Islamic Revolution established a fundamentalist regime there. which intellectuals are, by definition, suspected of spreading the harmful values of the West.
Like any dictatorial government, the government in Tehran needs the blind obedience of the people to function properly, and so it is very much. Art that stimulates critical thinking because its creators are enemies.. Filmmakers have gotten used to having to choose between being persecuted, accepting censorship scissors, or choosing exile in the case of famous figures like Mohsen Makhmalbaf or Bahman Ghobadi.
The latest campaign launched by the country’s authorities against the artists took place at the end of last year as a result of the violent backlash against the anti-government protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death; over a hundred members of the film industry -among them famous actress Taraneh Alidoosti, star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning movie ‘The Salesman’ (2016)- They were arrested or disbarred.
Over the past 12 years, Panahi has secretly produced at least five films, despite the ban, which continues to put pressure on it.unclassifiable and incredibly ingenious works that question the nature of cinema and are fueled by the complex personal and social conditions that determined its creation.
One of them, ‘This is not a movie’ (2011), left Iran for film Cannes Film Festival on a USB drive hidden inside raspberry pieit’s like a dossier sent to a prisoner and the contents of the cake containing another who traveled to the Berlinale, ‘Taxi Tehran (2015), in which he won the Golden Bear, are unknown.
The phrase ‘There are no bears’ is perhaps the most daring and angry of them all. Set on the skin of a semi-fictional version of himself by the producer, and set in a border town that is actually the exemplary button of an entire country—primitive traditions, absurd superstitions, criminal misogyny—the defiant intent of a man who could return to prison at any moment while waiting for his sentence to be revoked to be officially recognized. statement: He will continue to make films no matter the cost.