Jafar Panahi, the winner of the Golden Palm, awakens hopes in Iran

Around 100 Iranian women and men chanted « woman, life, freedom » when Jafar Panahi, the winner of this year’s Golden Palm, arrived at the Tehran Airport early Monday morning. The slogan is the motto of the protests that had broken out throughout Iran after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022.

Panahi had also made the bloody downturnal demonstrations and the continued resistance of Iranian women against the duty to head. « Nobody should dare to write to us what clothes we wear, what we do or what we shouldn’t do, » said the 64-year-old filmmaker under frenetic applause.

« The most important thing is now our home country and its freedom », which could only be achieved if « the Iranians join together, » he emphasized. Many Iranians are likely to interpret his brave appeal as a call to continued resistance to the Islamist regime in Tehran. It last ordered Jafar Panahi’s arrest in July 2022. After seven months in prison and a hunger strike, the prominent Iranian filmmaker was released in spring 2023, the judge imposed on him officially.

Nevertheless, Panahi has to count on his new arrest practically every day. For the judiciary of the Mullahs, it would be easy to complain about it again after his courageous “resistance speech” in Cannes. The fact that Panahi remains in freedom for the time being is primarily owe to his international fame, which he has acquired with his many -distinguished films. « The regime has now also understood that the arrest of prominent personalities is further fueling the resistance to the ruling clergy, » said a spokeswoman for the Iranian opposition to the correspondent of this newspaper.

The film, his maker and political explosiveness

She didn’t want to give her name for fear of reprisals. In view of the worshiping dispute with the USA for a new nuclear agreement, she added, the Mullahs currently had no interest in « providing new steep templates to the opposition ». For this reason, the Iranian Security Council would have stopped implementing a new headscarf law last weekend. It provided for women who do not adhere to the rigid Islamic headscarf obligation, high fines, withdrawal of public services and long prison terms.

Panahi had shot his film “It was just an accident” in Cannes with the Golden Palm – the Luxembourg Bidibul Productions Luxembourg company – secretly in Iran. If he had submitted his script to the Ministry of Islamic Leadership, it would never have been approved. The film is politically highly explosive: five Iranians are shown who confront a man from whom they believe he has tortured them in prison. Now you have to decide whether you want to take revenge on him. The psychological thriller, who was celebrated in Cannes with eight minutes of “standing ovations”, was inspired by Panahi’s own detention in the notorious Tehran Evin prison.

« All the figures you see in this film are inspired by conversations that I have led in prison, of stories that people have told me about the four decades of violent violence and brutality of the Iranian government, » Panahi reported to the audience in Cannes. Back at home, the artist from the Iranian province of East-Saserbeidschan wants to work on a new film.

« If the cinema is really what makes your life sense, » the father of two children once said, « then no regime, no censorship can be stopped ».