Jafar Panahi, born in Iran in 1960, is a truly creative director, screenwriter, and editor. He has dozens of awards and credits from around the world stretching over three decades. But above all, he is one of the world’s most courageous and caring dissident artists, daring us to dream and ask the hard questions, “what would you do? what would you risk?” through his films and in real life. He must be defended against the latest attack by the theocratic regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI).

Panahi is on tour for his Academy Award-nominated film It Was Just an Accident. The film won the prestigious Palme d’Or award in May 2025 at the Cannes Film Festival in France. Panahi is currently on a world tour for this film. Last week,  Iran’s regime gave him a one-year sentence in absentia and a two-year travel ban. Variety reported that while at a film festival in Morocco, Panahi said, regarding this sentence, that “I know my films don’t please the government,” but that he plans to return to Iran upon completing the tour.

It Was Just an Accident is a morality thriller about revenge that has universal lessons. It follows the journey of former political prisoners who are seeking justice against their purported torturer. It is full of wild twists and turns and nuances based on Panahi’s own experiences as a twice-jailed political prisoner. The key questions posed are the consequences to their own humanity: Will the victims just become like their oppressors? Will you? Does the end justify the means? Or will the ordinary people rise above in their search for real justice and a better world? 

Theocrats Attempt to Silence Criticism but Had to Back Off 

Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist regime repeatedly tried to suppress Panahi's voice but had to back off, up to now, due to his irrepressible and brave persistence and international support. 

In 2009, Panahi was arrested at the cemetery as he joined mourners for 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, who was murdered by IRI police during “Green Movement” protests against suspicious election results. At a subsequent film festival, he convinced the jury to all wear green scarves in solidarity with this movement. In 2010, he was arrested for making a documentary about it. Later that year, he was given a six-year sentence and a 20-year ban on filmmaking; he was released on bail four months later after international outrage, and then placed under house arrest. 

Panahi has continued to make films clandestinely, including This Is Not a Film, shot inside his house, and Taxi, shot inside a cab with him as the driver interviewing riders. (See a synopsis of his films.) He has consistently stood up for others, such as against the repression of rapper Toomaj Salehi, and recently in October, signing a solidarity statement for the ongoing prisoner hunger strikes against executions at Ghezel Hesar Prison.

International and broad support has been a critical factor in this struggle, including from prominent U.S. filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, the late Robert Redford, and Francis Ford Coppola. He is justifiably a most beloved, popular artist among the people of Iran as well.

In 2022 Panahi was arrested when he went to Evin Prison to inquire about two of his jailed colleagues, one of whom was the world-renowned film director Mohammad Rasoulof, who has been forced into exile. After seven months in Evin, Panahi went on a hunger strike and was released shortly thereafter. Clearly la lucha continua (the struggle continues). 

U.S. Condemns State Repression—by Iran

The U.S. State Department’s Persian-language account on X immediately kicked into gear to exploit the Iranian regime’s attack on Panahi. It is worse than shameless hypocrisy at the very moment Trump issued a travel ban on 19 countries, including Iran. It is yet another reality check, a real-life reminder of the truth in the IEC’s 2021 Emergency Appeal's unique political stance that:

The governments of the U.S. and Iran act from their national interests. And, in this instance, we the people of the U.S. and Iran, along with the people of the world, have OUR shared interests, as part of getting to a better world: to unite to defend the political prisoners of Iran. In the U.S., we have a special responsibility to unite very broadly against this vile repression by the IRI, and to actively oppose any war moves by the U.S. government that would bring even more unbearable suffering to the people of Iran.

Astute observers of geopolitics may note that the erasure of truth and real history is in full swing in the United States of Amnesia. The State Department might check on the history of how Panahi was harassed by the New York Police Department at JFK airport in April 2001 en route to a film festival. They demanded to fingerprint and photograph him, to which he refused to submit and was then handcuffed, denied phone calls, and finally released a day later. Given the U.S. track record of coups and invasions in the world, including Iran in 1953, its State Department should be automatically disqualified in any language unless it first condemns itself and its now fascist Trump regime.

We demand of the Islamic Republic of Iran: HANDS OFF JAFAR PANAHI! FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW!

We say to the US government: NO THREATS OR WAR MOVES AGAINST IRAN! LIFT SANCTIONS!