Iran Director Jafar Panahi Released From Prison

Acclaimed Iran filmmaker and political dissident Jafar Panahi was released from prison Friday after months behind bars.

News of Panahi’s release, first reported by Iranian independent journalist Mansour Jahani, comes shortly after Panahi, director of The Circle, Taxi and No Bears, announced he had begun a hunger strike to protest his continued incarceration.

Panahi’s imprisonment had drawn the attention of international film festivals and activists, as it shone a light on repression of the national cinema industry and continuing demonstrations around women’s rights in Iran.

The Berlin Film Festival, which gave Panahi’s Taxi drama a Golden Bear prize in 2015, offered relief over the director’s release from prison after expressing concern for other arrested filmmakers in Iran. “We were very concerned for the health of Jafar Panahi and are now very glad that he has finally been released,”  Berlinale directors Mariëtte Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian said in a joint statement on Friday.

Panahi was arrested last July when he went to authorities to inquire about the arrest of two of his director colleagues. He was instead arrested himself and told he would have to serve a six-year prison sentence for a ruling handed down in 2010 but never enforced.

Panahi had argued the statute of limitations on his original sentence had expired and he should be released until his original case could be appealed. Iran’s Supreme Court agreed, but no action was taken, and Jafar remained in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

“This arrest was more like banditry and hostage-taking than the execution of a judicial sentence,” Panahi said in a Feb. 1 statement relayed from his prison cell by his wife. The defiant director, whose most recent film, No Bears, premiered in Venice, added he would refuse all food, drink and medicine until he was freed from prison.

Since Panahi’s arrest, Iran has been rocked by nation-wide protests following the death, in September, of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in custody after being arrested by Iran’s morality police who claimed she was wearing her hijab improperly.

The international film industry has rallied to support the protesters and to call for Panahi’s release.