Jaffer Panahi | Autonomous

There is a scene in the 2015 film Taxi Tehran Where a seller of fake foreign film CDs uses a taxi, which motivates himself to play himself by the director of the film, to sell. Whereas the mainstream directors visited the transaction with fake, Jafar Panahi with an expression of grief and understanding. The Iranian director, who was to shoot most of his films in privacy and excluded him from his country, in an example in a flash drive hidden inside the birthday cake, also gives a few words of advice to the young buyer who is an ambitious filmmaker. The available books and movies have already been made, Panahi tells the young man, someone should watch beyond what is in front of him.

But Panahi, the irony is that in a sense, during his career, he advised the young man not to do so. He changed his lens that was in front of him and showed him to the world despite the branding of the “enemy of the state” by the Iranian authorities. He banned him from making films or leaving the country, and imprisoned him in the infamous Evin Jail. Last week, standing under the spotlight in Kan Riviera, holding the iconic Palame D’Or for his “Revenge thriller” It was just an accidentPanahi hoped that his society could reach a place where no one is told whether or what not and what not to do.

Inspired by his experiences in jail, It was just an accident Born from the artistic resistance of powerism which is present during his filmography, which is included Circle, Closed curtains, OffsideAnd This is not a filmPanahi recalls that during his imprisonment in 2022 for allegations of participating in the Green Wave Movement of former President Mahmood Ahmadinejad in 2009 in 2009, he was blindfolded during interrogation with questions coming from behind him. He says that in prisoners’ minds play a huge role without any face, and their latest film closes with this aspect. The film focused around the moral dilemma among a group of prisoners after the kidnapping of a person, whose shoes heard the sound to harass the sound in jail. But he is not sure whether he was actually a torture or not, creates the main struggle of the film.

Social filmmaker

The ear 2025 was the first visit to Panahi out of Iran in 15 years after the country’s apex court reduced his sentence. This was also the first time in that period that he was watching one of his films with the audience in one cinema. Panahi, which describes herself as a “social filmmaker”, says that his presence for films and his ability to see his reaction to the individual would have greatly improved his tasks. But the lack of spectators did not prevent them from frameing the streets of Tehran. He took his camera through the changes of the Iranian society. Panahi says that he always portrays the truth and reality of his nearby, and before 2022, his films were women in the Hedscarws and Veil seen on the streets.

He recalls that hearing protests against the mandatory dress code arising out of Mahsa Amini’s death while in jail, and seeing women without a scarf during a visit from the jail to the hospital. And the imprisonment of their films showed silent opposition to women without the scarf, they say, such as brave women chose to disobey codes.

While Panahi returned to Iran for a happy reception after the victory of ear, it is still not clear what he is waiting at home. He made his latest film, most of his tasks, in privacy, without presenting his script as its scrutiny. Iran has already sought an explanation from a French envoy from a French envoy on the praise of the film, while conservative critics have disregarded Panahi’s achievement. But Panahi says that his return is in solidarity with women who have opted to go against the conservative moral system. “I have just made a film,” he said, “who is not as courageous as women, who will be unknown to the world. Everyone knows if I have been arrested, but no one will hear about them. That’s why I should go back”.