He just wanted to express solidarity with the prosecutor after the Inquire about the fate of two arrested colleagues – now he himself has to be behind bars for six years. According to the state news agency IRNA, the Iranian judiciary confirmed on Tuesday that the award-winning film director Jafar Panahi will not be released from Ewin prison in Tehran – the 62-year-old must now serve out a previous six-year prison sentence in full. The filmmaker whose “Taxi Tehran” Winner of the Golden Berlinale Bear in 2015, had continued to make films in the past despite a ban on working, house arrest and a ban on leaving the country.
The colleagues Panahi wanted to support had been arrested shortly before him: Berlinale winner Mohammed Rassulof (“But there is no evil“) and Mostafa Al-Ahmad. According to the Iranian judiciary, they are said to have endangered public order with an appeal and also worked with opponents of the regime. More than 70 people from the Iranian film industry demanded with the hashtag “Put your gun down” (Legt put your gun down) an end to police violence. Rassulof and Al-Ahmad are said to have been the initiators. The background to the appeal is the collapse of a high-rise building in the southwestern Iranian city of Abadan with more than 40 fatalities in May, which led to nationwide protests and violent reactions from the police Panahi claims to have expressed solidarity with several hundred filmmakers on the Internet after the arrest at the weekend with Rassulof and Al-Ahmad.