The Iranian director Jafar Panahi, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2025 for A Simple Incident, has been convicted in absentia by Section 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court to five years and one month of imprisonment, the confiscation of all his movable and immovable property, and a two-year ban on leaving the country, as well as a two-year prohibition on engaging in social media activities. This was announced by journalist Mansour Jahani, citing the director’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili.
Nili also disclosed that his client’s bank accounts had been frozen last week. Visiting the Enforcement Unit of Sentences of the Prosecutor for Culture and Media, they learned that a new in-absentia verdict had been issued against him. In the case file it is stated that Panahi was abroad and unreachable, while he had actually returned to Iran on March 30, 2026, precisely during the ongoing war with Israel and the United States.
Highlighting a contradiction in the judicial process, Nili stated: “Section 16 of the Prosecutor for Culture and Media issued an arrest warrant on May 20, 2026, exactly the same date on which my client was present at another division of the court for a hearing related to a different case.” The lawyer argues that Panahi currently has three ongoing legal proceedings and that the date of the hearing for the new case had not been communicated to his client, adding the in-absentia nature of the verdict issued.
Jafar Panahi has been arrested and imprisoned numerous times in the past. In 2020 he was sentenced to six years in prison, in addition to a twenty-year ban on making films, writing screenplays, and traveling abroad. In July 2022 he was arrested to serve this sentence and transferred to Evin Prison, from where he was released on February 3, 2023, after about seven months. In December 2025 he was also sentenced to one year in prison and to additional punitive measures on the charge of “propaganda activities against the regime,” a sentence later upheld on appeal.
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