Jafar Panahi refuses exile and keeps his camera rolling

Jafar Panahi does not like being called brave. The 65-year-old Iranian filmmaker, who has been imprisoned, placed under travel bans and instructed not to direct for twenty years, rejects the very idea that persistence in his craft is an act of defiance. “I was told not to make films. I had to make films,” he says. To him, there was no heroic stand — only the refusal to live without cinema.

How Jafar Panahi keeps making cinema under constraint

That instinct has shaped one of the most singular careers in contemporary filmmaking. Since first being jailed in 2009, Panahi has worked in near-clandestine conditions, often shooting in compressed spaces with tiny crews or directing remotely. This Is Not a Film (2011) was crafted in his own living room, filmed partly on an iPhone. Taxi (2015) unfolded almost entirely from the front seat of a car, with Panahi serving as both driver and narrator. Each project demonstrated not rebellion, but ingenuity — filmmaking as survival, not spectacle.

His latest work, It Was Just an Accident, was made underground after a seven-month imprisonment that ended in 2023, when a hunger strike forced his release. Inspired by stories he heard from fellow detainees, the film follows a former prisoner who believes he has identified the interrogator who abused him — though blindfolds have left him uncertain. The uncertainty becomes the heart of the film: what is justice when memory is incomplete, or when trauma distorts clarity?

Panahi has been unable to travel with his films for nearly two decades. Festivals across the world would reserve an empty seat bearing his name, a quiet testament to his absence. But this year brought an unexpected shift. His travel ban was lifted, and for the first time in years he was able to attend screenings abroad. When It Was Just an Accident premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Panahi walked on stage himself to accept the Palme d’Or — a moment that felt as improbable as it was overdue.

The applause abroad does not alter his refusal to be packaged as a dissident auteur. He is quick to emphasise that others have endured as much or more, without global recognition. “There were people in prison on hunger strikes for 30 days and no one heard about them,” he says. His own ordeal drew attention because of his name — not because his suffering was uniquely severe.

Despite his international standing, Panahi continues to work without state approval. During one nighttime shoot for It Was Just an Accident, crew members were detained when authorities discovered them filming without permits. The risks remain real. Yet he has remained in Iran while other filmmakers have sought asylum abroad. He still considers home inseparable from his identity. Exile, he believes, would dull the authenticity of his work.

This refusal has also complicated awards recognition. The Academy requires international film entries to be submitted by their country of origin. Iran declined to select Panahi’s film, so France — which co-produced it — made the submission instead. For Panahi, the issue is not patriotic insult but structural contradiction: filmmakers should not have to seek government blessing in order to compete internationally.

His relationship with power is more philosophical than political. He is not lecturing the system so much as outlasting it. He says he does not wish to deliver moral lessons — only to pose questions, and let the audience reckon with them. It Was Just an Accident includes scenes with actresses not wearing hijabs, not as slogan or manifesto, but as a portrait of lived reality.

Panahi first picked up a camera at age ten, photographing streets instead of landscapes. He has been drawn to people ever since — the overlooked, the unheard, the ordinary figures carrying silent testimony. His cinema has always been anchored not in protest but in witness.

“I haven’t created the darkness,” he says. “The darkness is there.” He is not trying to overthrow it, only to hold a light steady enough that others may see. For Panahi, that is not resistance — it is simply filmmaking.

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