Iranian court sentences Palme d'Or-winning director Jafar Panahi to five years and orders his assets seized after his return home
Jafar Panahi, whose Palme d'Or-winning film was cited as evidence against him, has been sentenced to five years in prison and had all his bank accounts frozen by a Tehran Revolutionary Court.
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, 66, has had all his bank accounts frozen and faces the seizure of every asset he owns after Branch 26 of Tehran's Revolutionary Court handed him a five-year, one-month prison sentence issued entirely in absentia. His lawyer Mostafa Nili discovered the verdict only after the accounts were frozen last week, having been given no notice of the hearing. The court also imposed a two-year travel ban and a two-year social media prohibition; the exact charges have not been publicly stated.
The sentence was delivered despite Panahi returning to Iran on 30 March 2026 — court documents wrongly claimed he was abroad and unreachable.
His Palme d'Or-winning film 'It Was Just an Accident', cited as evidence against him, was made secretly in Iran after he ended a seven-month hunger strike to secure his 2023 release from Evin Prison.
Panahi now faces three separate open legal proceedings and has already had a 2025 'propaganda against the regime' conviction upheld on appeal this June.
