Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi has returned to Tehran cheered by supporters after scooping the Cannes Palme d’Or for his new film “It Was Just an Accident” which is sparking a diplomatic spat between Iran and France.
Panahi arrived at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport on Monday morning greeted by applause, as he hugged friends and fans who presented him with flowers when the revered auteur descended the escalator from passport control, as seen on social media posts.
Meanwhile, also on social media, a spat has erupted after French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called Panahi’s victory “a gesture of resistance against the Iranian regime’s oppression” in a post on X. This in turn prompted an irked reaction from Tehran.
“I am not an art expert, but we believe that artistic events and art in general should not be exploited to pursue political objectives,” said Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei.
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Panahi was able to travel to Cannes to promote his surreptitiously shot film after being incarcerated twice for “propaganda against the state” and banned from making films, speaking to the press, and leaving Iran for more than 14 years.
“It Was Just an Accident” is about a group of former political prisoners who kidnap a man whom they believe to be their former interrogator and torturer. The film, which the director in an interview with Variety said was inspired by his experiences in an Iranian prison, has now given Panahi, who is 64, the rare distinction of having won the top prize at all three major European film festivals, after taking Berlin’s Golden Bear for “Taxi” in 2015 and the Golden Lion at Venice for “The Circle” in 2000. Panahi was not able to attend those festivals due to his ban which was lifted in April 2023.
Iranian media have largely ignoring Jafar Panahi’s momentous Cannes Palme d’Or victory.
Though Iran’s state news agency IRNA trumpeted Panahi’s award with a picture of him and the headline “The world’s largest film festival made history for Iranian cinema,” news that Panahi scooped the Palme did not appear on the websites of the nation’s top English-language news outlets, Tehran Times and Iran Daily on Sunday.
From Variety US