Director Jafar Panahi at the Middleburg Film Festival at the Salamander Middleburg in Virginia in October. Photo / Jabin Botsford, the Washington Post
No one at Monday’s 35th annual Gotham Awards was riding a bigger emotional rollercoaster than Jafar Panahi.
Hours before the ceremony that many consider the unofficial start of Oscars season, the acclaimed director received word that Iran had sentenced him to a year of prison in absentia, as well as a two-year ban on leaving Iran and a prohibition against being a member of any political or social groups.
Panahi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, said in a post on X that he would appeal the conviction, which accuses him – not for the first time – of “propaganda activities against the system”.
Panahi lives in Tehran with his wife, son and daughter but has been touring the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia as part of the Oscar campaign for his latest film, the Palme d’Or-winning “It Was Just an Accident” – based on his experiences being a political prisoner in Iran.
Yet, there he was Monday night, walking the red carpet at the Gothams with his interpreter, Sheida Dayani, skipping interviews (which is unusual for him) and heading straight into cocktails. He’d arrived to the party well before an array of Hollywood stars, including Rihanna, A$AP Rocky, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lawrence, Jacob Elordi, Kate Hudson, Elle Fanning, Michael B. Jordan, Rose Byrne and Adam Sandler.
In 2010, Panahi had been sentenced to prison for six years and banned from making films or leaving Iran for 20 years. He made a string of daring, award-winning movies anyway, and served time twice in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, in 2010 and 2022, being subjected to extreme forms of torture and interrogation. After his last prison stint ended in a hunger strike that many feared would kill him, all bans against him were lifted in 2023.
He was finally free to make films and live his life. Or so he thought.
Asked by the Washington Post how he felt about his new prison sentence, Panahi laughed loudly and said, “I still have not spoken to my lawyer. I first need to speak to my lawyer”. But in September, he told the Post that he did not fear a return to prison and sometimes missed the sanctions because they allowed him to think about whatever film he would make next.
“They banned me from making films for about 20 years and from leaving Iran … What else is left for them to do?” he said in September.
He also said that although other Iranian filmmakers have fled the country and now work in exile, he never could: “I will always return home. I cannot be separate from Iran.”
Monday night, Panahi was the first winner to step on stage, as presenter Teyana Taylor, who’d forgotten her glasses, enthusiastically butchered his name, alongside her One Battle After Another castmates Regina Hall and Chase Infiniti.
“I hope that this dedication would be considered a tribute to all filmmakers who have been deprived of their right to speak and to be seen, but continue to create and to exist,” he said, accepting the award for best original screenplay.
The darkly funny It Was Just an Accident follows a group of former political prisoners who kidnap a man they believe was their interrogator – only they can’t be sure because they were blindfolded as he tortured them.
Panahi dedicated the award to “independent filmmakers in Iran and around the world, filmmakers who keep the camera rolling in silence, without support, and give everything they have, only with their faith in truth and humanity”.
Later in the ceremony, he cried out with joy and pumped his fists into the air as he won best international feature, saying what an honour and pleasure it was to be surrounded by independent filmmakers.
When he won the award for best director, beating out Paul Thomas Anderson and Kelly Reichardt, the room erupted in cheers.
The night seemed to be going Panahi’s way so much that even Anderson seemed shocked when his film One Battle After Another won the final award of the night for best feature after losing in every other category: “I didn’t expect this. I don’t know what’s going on, but thank you very much,” Anderson said.
The Gothams are a quirky anomaly in the awards season. Formerly awards for low-budget independent films, it has since raised the budget cap to honour “visionary talent in front of and behind the camera”, according to its website. Each category is nominated by one of several small committees and voted on by a separate jury of five.
Although winning a Gotham isn’t a great Oscars predictor, winning three is certainly attention-grabbing: enough so to put Panahi at the top of the leaderboard for best international feature at the Academy Awards. (France chose his film as its submission because it could never be nominated by Iran.)
Moreover, though, the awards signal a growing sense that Panahi may soon make history as the first Iranian to be nominated for best director and that It Was Just an Accident could become the first Iranian film to be nominated for best picture.
And from the warmth and affection Panahi received Monday night, it seems clear that, while his legal troubles are only beginning in Iran, he has a giant global film community rallying behind him.
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