Iranian director Jafar Panahi was sentenced to five years in prison and banned from leaving the country for two years, according to his lawyer. The filmmaker, known for being critical of the regime, has been arrested several times and was previously sentenced to six years in prison and twenty years of ban on filming.
© ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images
27/10/2026
by
Lusa
O iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has already been the subject of several lawsuits in Iran, has been sentenced to about five years in prison and is forbidden to leave the country for two years, today the lawyer revealed.
In statements to the Iranian newspaper Etemad, the lawyer told that the filmmaker was convicted in absentia of five years and a month in prison by the Tehran Revolutionary Court.
The court also decided to confiscate all of his assets and forbid him to leave the country and use social media for two years, having already frozen the director's bank accounts.
The lawyer said that he learned of this new conviction without being notified to hold any judicial hearing or trial; the court justified the fact that Jafar Panahi was absent from the country.
Jafar Panahi is one of the best-known and award-winning Iranian directors and is also one of the most critical voices of the Tehran regime, being accused by political power of “propaganda against the regime”.
He has been arrested and sentenced several times, including in 2020, when he was sentenced to six years in prison and twenty years in which he was forbidden to film and travel abroad.
In May 2025, Jafar Panahi managed to leave Iran for the first time in 15 years, and presented the film “It was just an accident” at the Cannes Film Festival in France, where he won the Golden Palm.
At the time of his presence in Cannes, Panahi was permanent in an interview with the France-Presse Agency: “I’m alive while making movies.”.
After making an international appearance to present the film, Jafar Panahi returned to Iran on 30 March this year and appeared in court in September because of another lawsuit, the lawyer said.
In order to dismantle the argument of the country's absence from the new conviction released today, the lawyer reveals that Jafar Panahi received a restraining order in May and that in September he was present at a hearing of the Revolutionary Court concerning another ongoing judicial proceedings.