Jafar Panahi Now Faces a Five-Year Prison Term in New Ruling on Top of His Previous One-Year Conviction

Cannes Palme d’Or-winning Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi – who was facing a one-year prison sentence – has now been sentenced by a Tehran Revolutionary Court to five years and one month in jail in a separate ruling, according to the Emtedad News Agency, an online Iranian reformist media outlet.

Panahi’s lawyer Mostafa Nili told Emtedad that the court has now sentenced his client in absentia to five years and one month of imprisonment – though implementation of both rulings is discretionary – and issued an order for the confiscation of Panahi’s assets, plus a two-year ban on using social media a two-year travel ban. It is unclear what the charges against Panahi are in this case.

The lawyer said that after Panahi’s bank accounts were suddenly frozen last week, he went to the prosecutor’s Tehran office with his client and learned of the verdict which has been issued in absentia. According to Nili, the case file stated that Panahi was living outside Iran, though the director had returned to Iran on March 30, 2026 shortly after the ceremony for the 98th Academy Awards, in which his latest film ”It Was Just an Accident” made it to the nomination stage as France’s candidate in the Best International Feature Film Category.

Over the past two decades, Panahi has had frequent run-ins with the Iranian authorities.

In 2010, the revered auteur — known globally also for other prize-winning works such as “The Circle,” “Offside,” “This is Not a Film,” “Taxi” and “No Bears” — was banned from making movies, speaking to the press and traveling, though he surreptitiously kept making them anyway.

In 2022, Panahi was arrested in connection with protests by a group of filmmakers but was released about seven months later.

The ban was lifted in April 2023, and Iranian authorities allowed Panahi to travel to Cannes to launch “It Was Just an Accident.” Panahi subsequently traveled widely to promote the drama, which centers around an outpouring of strong feelings by a group of former prisoners toward a torturous guard and stems from his incarceration.

But he returned to Iran despite the fact that, at that point, he faced a one-year prison sentence in his home country and a climate of escalating tension that made his return very risky.

“I am the kind of person who needs to be in his country,” Panahi told Variety. “I need to breathe there and work there. And even if they want to go ahead with that prison sentence, they can go ahead. Nothing will change my mind about going back.”