Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi, who has beforehand been arrested and jailed and whose movies have been banned in Iran on a number of events, has stated “even my closest friends had given up hope that I would ever make films again”.
Panahi was speaking at a press conference earlier than the premiere of his new movie A Simple Accident on the Cannes movie pageant, his first go to in 22 years since bringing Crimson Gold to Cannes in 2003. Panahi was launched from jail in Iran in 2023, having been detained in 2022 after making an attempt to help fellow film-maker Mohammad Rasoulof and subsequently happening starvation strike.
Panahi stated: “I said to myself I didn’t know how to do anything else … I can’t change a lightbulb, I can’t work a screwdriver. I don’t know how to do anything except make films.”
A Simple Accident is the primary movie Panahi has made since his launch. A thriller a few automotive accident that triggers a sequence of more and more nightmarish occasions, the Guardian’s chief film critic Peter Bradshaw described it as Panahi’s “most emotionally explicit film yet: a film about state violence and revenge, about the pain of tyranny that coexists with ostensible everyday normality”. It was produced by French firm Les Films Pelléas, shot in Iran and edited in France.
In the run-up to Cannes, Panahi spoke to the Guardian in his first newspaper interview for 15 years, despite being given a 20-year ban on speaking to the media in 2010. In the interview, Panahi stated his latest time in jail led on to the thought for his new movie: “I was in a large space with other political prisoners. Some of them had been there for 10 or 15 years. Their experience – their stories, their take on what captivity meant to them – was inspiring. It was like the world opened up to me. Gradually, I had an idea for a film that gathered these pieces together.”
Panahi’s clashes with authorities in Iran date way back to 2003, when he was arrested at Tehran airport after getting back from a movie pageant in Moscow. In 2010 he was sentenced to 6 years in jail for allegedly “endangering national security” after the “green movement” protests in opposition to Iran’s authorities. His sentence was later modified to accommodate arrest and restriction of motion.
Panahi continued to make movies in defiance of the authorities, together with This Is Not a Film from 2011, which was proven at Cannes after being smuggled out of Iran on a USB drive hidden inside a cake, Closed Curtain, shot inside a home with the curtains closed, and which gained the Silver Bear for finest screenplay on the Berlin movie pageant in 2013 and Taxi Tehran, solely shot inside vehicles, which gained the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2015. He additionally gained the most effective screenplay award at Cannes for 2018’s 3 Faces and the particular jury prize at Venice for 2022’s No Bears.
Panahi stated on the Cannes press convention that he had no intention of giving up work. “I behave just like other Iranians, I’m not a special case in any matter. The Iranian women are forbidden to go out without a headscarf but still they do so. I’m not doing anything more heroic. As soon as I finish my work here I will go back to Iran, the next day. And I will ask myself what’s my next film going to be.”
