Jafar Panahi | The auteur of dissent Premium

The Hindu’s profile on Jafar Panahi

There is a scene in the 2015 movie Taxi Tehran where a seller of counterfeited foreign movie CDs use a taxi, driven by the director of the movie playing himself, to make a sale. While mainstream directors rue counterfeits, Jafar Panahi observes the transaction with an expression of sorrow and understanding. The Iranian director, who had to shoot most of his movies in secrecy and smuggle them out of his country, in a flash drive hidden inside a birthday cake in one instance, also gives some words of advice to the young buyer who is an aspiring filmmaker. The books and movies available are already made, Panahi says to the young man, one must look beyond what is in front of him.

But Panahi, ironically in a sense, did throughout his career what he advised the young man not to do. He turned his lens to what was in front of him and showed it to the world despite the Iranian authorities branding him an “enemy of the state”. They banned him from making movies or leaving the country, and imprisoned him at the notorious Evin prison. Standing under the spotlight at the Cannes Riviera last week, holding the prestigious Palme d’Or for his “revenge thriller” It Was Just an Accident, Panahi expressed hope that his society could get to a place where no one is told what or what not to do and what or what not to make.

Inspired by his experiences in jail, It Was Just an Accident is born from the artistic resistance of authoritarianism that is present throughout his filmography, including The Circle, Closed Curtain, Offside, and This Is Not a Film. Panahi recalls how, during his imprisonment in 2022 for charges of participating in the Green Wave movement following the controversial re-election of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, he was blindfolded during interrogation with questions coming from behind him. He says voices with no faces play a huge role in the minds of prisoners, and his latest movie takes off with this aspect. The movie centres around the moral dilemma among a group of former prisoners after kidnapping a man whose boots made the sound one of them had heard while being tortured in prison. But they are not sure whether he was indeed the torturer or not, creating the core conflict of the movie.

Cannes 2025 was Panahi’s first trip out of Iran in 15 years after the country’s top court quashed his conviction. It was also the first time in that period that he was watching one of his movies at a cinema with an audience. Panahi, who describes himself as a “social filmmaker”, says the presence of audience for his movies and the ability to see their reaction in person would have made his works a lot better. But the lack of audience didn’t stop him from framing the streets of Tehran. He took his camera through the changes of Iranian society. Panahi says he always portrays the truth and reality around him, and his movies before 2022 had women in headscarves and veils as seen in the streets.

He recalls hearing of the protests against the mandatory dress code sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini while being in prison, and seeing women without scarves while on a hospital visit from prison. And his movies post imprisonment showed the silent protest of women without scarves, he says, like the brave women who chose to disobey the codes.

While Panahi returned to Iran to a cheering welcome after the Cannes triumph, it is still unclear what awaits him at home. He had made his latest film, like most of his works, in secrecy without submitting its script to the authorities for scrutiny as is stipulated. Iran has already sought explanation from a French envoy over a French Minister’s praise of the film while conservative critics have disregarded Panahi’s achievement. But Panahi says his return is in solidarity with the women who have opted to go against the orthodox moral system. “I just made a movie,” he has said, “which is not as courageous as what the women, who will be unknown to the world, are doing. Everyone will know if I am arrested, but no one will hear of them. That is why I must go back”.