Jafar Panahi - summary of his case and global protest

I've prepared this briefing document for film industry contacts in Australia, summarising the global campaign for Jafar Panahi's release. It's shorter than some of the material previously posted here - and up to date.

(There have been a report of a hunger strike among political prisoners at the jail where Panahi is being held, and another suggesting that Offside, his last film - pictured above - has just been passed for screening by Iranian censors, but both reports are unconfirmed.)

Filmmakers around the world are greatly concerned for the condition of the acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi.

The director of films including Offside and The Circle is still being held in isolation inside a Tehran prison cell after being arrested on March 1. Initial hopes for an early release – the usual pattern when filmmakers have been arrested in Iran – came to nothing.

The Iranian culture minister has claimed that Panahi had been making a film “against the regime” that covered the “events” following last year’s bitterly contested election result, but the director’s wife, Tahereh Saeedi, has denied this.

Panahi‘s films have won major prizes at many film festivals including Cannes, Berlin and Venice and won admiration from audiences around the world, including Australia.

Saeedi has expressed fears for her husband’s health and accused the authorities of torture. “Every possible way has been used for breaking his spirit,” she said after visiting him last month. “He is deprived of his basic and legal rights. Can all of this be called anything but torture? Does a regime have the right to treat one of its artistic elite so shamefully and inhumanely on the basis of a film that has not yet been made?“

Supporters around the world have been mounting screenings of Panahi’s films in solidarity – 25 countries so far - and plans are under way in Australia. The Cannes film festival has symbolically reserved a seat for him on the jury of this month’s event and a petition calling for his release has been signed by virtually every leading US filmmaker.

The signatories are Paul Thomas Anderson, Joel & Ethan Coen, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Robert De Niro, Curtis Hanson, Jim Jarmusch, Ang Lee,Richard Linklater, Terrence Malick, Michael Moore,Robert Redford Martin Scorsese, James Schamus, Paul Schrader, Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and Frederick Wiseman.

The US petition concludes: “Iran’s contributions to international cinema have been rightfully heralded, and encouraged those of us outside the country to respect and cherish its people and their stories. Like artists everywhere, Iran’s filmmakers should be celebrated, not censored, repressed, and imprisoned.”