Iranian filmmaker and Berlinale winner Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to six years in prison. The Iranian judiciary announced today that the 62-year-old will serve his sentence in Tehran’s Ewin prison.
Panahi was arrested in the Iranian capital on Monday last week. He was sentenced to six years in prison in 2010 for “propaganda once morest the regime” and was banned from making films, writing screenplays or speaking to the media for 20 years. He was accused of supporting protests once morest the re-election of ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 and of making critical films.
Three days before Panahi’s arrest, filmmaker Mohammed Rasulof, who had also won international awards, and his colleague Mostafa Aleahmad had already been taken into custody in Iran. According to the state news agency IRNA, they were charged with “inciting unrest”.