Jafar Panahi Sentenced to Five Years and One Month in Absentia

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi received a five-year-and-one-month prison sentence in absentia (in his absence), according to Mansour Jahani, an independent film journalist based in Tehran. Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court issued the ruling, which Jahani’s release reported through Panahi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili.

IndieWire learned of the sentencing from Jahani, who has regularly covered the legal repercussions Panahi has faced. His report identifies Panahi as an Oscar-nominated director who returned to Iran earlier this year after a global awards push for his thriller It Was Just an Accident.

The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025, ahead of a dedicated Academy Awards campaign. Jahani’s report says that campaign yielded Oscar nominations for Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay.

Nili’s account identifies three related measures in the case:

• A two-year travel ban for Panahi.
• A two-year prohibition on social-media activity.
• A freeze on Panahi’s bank accounts the previous week.

What does the ruling change for Panahi?

The account freeze prompted a meeting with the Enforced of Judgments Unit at Iran’s Cultural and Media Prosecutor’s Office. That meeting revealed that Panahi had received the new sentence in absentia. Nili said authorities could not reach him because they believed he was abroad.

But Jahani’s report says Panahi had been in Iran since returning in March and had appeared before a different branch of that office in September. Nili said Panahi had not been notified of a hearing date. Jahani’s release does not date the new sentence or explain how the authorities justified his absence.

On the evidence available, the ruling changes Panahi’s legal position but does not establish that he is now imprisoned. Enforcement is the practical issue: authorities must act on a judgment issued in absentia against a filmmaker whom Nili says they could not reach. Jahani’s report does not resolve that issue or say whether Panahi has been detained under the new sentence.

These restrictions extend a pattern of state pressure that Jahani’s account documents. Iranian authorities have arrested and imprisoned Panahi numerous times, placed him under house arrest and barred him from filmmaking. He has often produced films covertly, incorporating legal restrictions into the techniques and plots of his work.

Jahani’s report says the Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced Panahi to six years in prison in 2010 and imposed a 20-year filmmaking ban. It also records a one-year sentence in December 2025 for “propaganda activity,” imposed while Panahi was in the United States promoting It Was Just an Accident. That campaign produced Oscar nominations for Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay.

The report also places those punishments alongside Panahi’s standing as one of Iran’s most prominent representatives in global cinema. The Circle won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000, and Taxi won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2015.

The unresolved issue is enforcement. Jahani’s report does not say whether Iran will imprison Panahi under the new term, activate the two-year bans or release the frozen funds. For a filmmaker already inside Iran, the next test is whether authorities act on the sentence and related measures rather than leaving them as recorded penalties.