The Iranian director Jafar Panahi won the Palme d’Or at Cannes on Saturday. Panahi received the prestigious film award for his film Un Simple Accident. The director has been arrested several times in his country for his films.
Un Simple Accident is about an Iranian man who wants to take revenge on someone who tortured him in prison, but accidentally kidnaps the wrong person.
Panahi is an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime. The filmmaker has been arrested several times for his “incendiary” films. Panahi also did not have permission from the regime to film Un Simple Accident.
In 2010, Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison in Iran. He appealed, but still had to go to prison in 2022. During his imprisonment, he went on a hunger strike, after which he was released on bail seven months later.
This is the second time Panahi has won an award at Cannes. In 1995 he won the Golden Camera for his debut film Badkonake Sefid.
Last year, fellow Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof received a special jury prize for his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Rasoulof fled his home country a few days before the Cannes Film Festival, where he had been sentenced to a prison sentence.