Filmmaker Panahi cheered on return to Iran after Cannes triumph
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was given a hero's welcome by supporters on his return to Tehran on Monday after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival, footage posted on social media showed.
After being banned from leaving Iran for years, forced to make films underground and enduring spells in prison, Panahi attended the French festival in person and sensationally walked away with the Palme d'Or for his latest movie, "It Was Just an Accident".
With some fans concerned that Panahi could face trouble on his return to Iran, he arrived without incident in the early hours of Monday at Tehran's main international airport, named after the founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Panahi was cheered by supporters waiting in the public area as he descended the escalator from passport control to baggage collection, footage posted by the Dadban legal monitor showed on social media.
One person could be heard shouting "Woman. Life. Freedom!" -- the slogan of the 2022-2023 protest movement that shook the Iranian authorities.
On exiting, he was greeted by around a dozen supporters who had stayed up to welcome him, according to footage posted on Instagram by the Iranian director Mehdi Naderi and broadcast by the Iran International Channel, which is based outside Iran.
Smiling broadly and waving, he was cheered, applauded, hugged and presented with flowers. "Fresh blood in the veins of Iranian independent cinema," Naderi wrote.
"He arrived in Tehran early this morning" and "has returned home," French film producer Philippe Martin told AFP, citing his entourage.
"He has even learned that he has obtained a visa to go to a festival in Sydney in about ten days' time," he said. The Sydney Film Festival has a retrospective of his work called "Cinema in Rebellion".
The warm welcome at the airport contrasted with the lukewarm reaction from Iranian state media and officials to the first Palme d'Or for an Iranian filmmaker since "The Taste of Cherry" by the late Abbas Kiarostami in 1997.
While evoked by state media including the IRNA news agency, Panahi's triumph has received only thin coverage inside Iran and has also sparked a diplomatic row with France.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called his victory "a gesture of resistance against the Iranian regime's oppression" in a post on X, prompting Tehran to summon France's charge d'affaires to protest the "insulting" comments.
"I am not an art expert, but we believe that artistic events and art in general should not be exploited to pursue political objectives," said foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei.
The film is politically charged, showing five Iranians confronting a man they believe tortured them in prison, a story inspired by Panahi's own time in detention.
After winning the prize, Panahi made a call for freedom in Iran. "Let's set aside all problems, all differences. What matters most right now is our country and the freedom of our country."
Fellow Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who presented his politically-charged latest film "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" at the 2024 festival after fleeing Iran, paid tribute to Panahi.
"It won't be long before 'It Was Just an Accident' reaches its primary audience: the people of Iran," Rasoulof wrote on Instagram, adding that "the decayed and hollow machinery of censorship under the Islamic Republic has been pushed back".
© 2025 AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Today
16 hours ago
- Japan Today
'Downton Abbey' fans pay homage to 'beautiful' props before finale
A clapper board used in the production of the film 'Downton Abbey: A New Era' By Caroline TAÏX As "Downton Abbey" draws to a close in September, some fans took solace by getting close to memorable props and costumes from the much-loved British saga as they went on sale Monday. Everyone has their favorite piece, including Charlie Thomas of London's Bonhams auction house which is holding the sale. He had no hesitation in highlighting the "bell wall", the servant's call system which appears from the first series to the last, as his favourite item. "Just to prove it's a working bell, look at that -- I expect someone's going to deliver tea in a minute," he joked while testing out the item, which is valued between £6,000 and £8,000. Thomas, who is in charge of the auction, suspects that it will smash its pre-sale valuation. The online sale began on Monday and will end on September 16, with the public invited to an exhibition of all the items before they go under the hammer. "We've already had a huge amount of interest coming from across the globe, especially from America, from Europe, a lot from northern Europe, from Asia," he added. "People have sort of fallen in love with these characters". The television series, created by Julian Fellowes, first aired in the UK in 2010 before conquering the world. It tells the story of the wealthy aristocratic Crawley family and their servants over a 30-year period, spanning six seasons and 52 episodes. More than 120 million viewers worldwide have seen the show, according to Bonhams. Two films were released in 2019 and 2022 and a third, "The Grand Finale", is due out on September 12. It will focus on divorce and the Crawley's survival in a constantly changing world. Visitors to the exhibition on Monday viewed the pieces with a reverential eye, with one woman taking a long look at the cane used by Violet Crawley, played by Maggie Smith, who died in September 2024. "It's a beautiful item," she told AFP, without giving her name. "I would like to buy the cane for my mother-in-law who is turning 70, but I am not sure how she'll take it," she added, with a smile. Other highlights include Lord and Lady Grantham's 1925 Sunbeam saloon car, which still runs (valued between £25,000 and £35,000), the dress worn by Lady Mary at her wedding to Matthew Crawley (valued between £3,000 and £5,000), and a pair of harem pants belonging to Lady Sybil, valued similarly. "My favorite piece(s) right now are just all the dresses. I don't think I could even pick one, they're all just so beautiful," said Hailey Bradley, a 23-year-old American living in London. "It's so glamorous," added Bradley, who described herself as "a big fan." Lucia Campara, an Italian woman from Milan, came with her husband and their 11-year-old daughter, Giulia. She organized the family holiday with the goal of visiting important places in Jane Austen's life, and discovering the worlds of "Harry Potter" and "Downton Abbey." "It's a unique occasion to see all those objects that will soon disappear," she explained. But Campara does not plan to bid, saying: "The best pieces will cost too much and anyway, it is not something you would use in your daily life." Jenny Foster, an 85-year-old British woman, was particularly interested in 1920s dresses, as she expressed her disappointment that the saga was coming to an end. "In fact, I shall probably watch it all again anyway now, because I've forgotten some of it now," she said. The proceeds from the sale will be donated to UK children's charity "Together for Short Lives". © 2025 AFP
Japan Today
16 hours ago
- Japan Today
'Call of Duty' to fire starting gun at Gamescom trade show
Fans often arrive at Gamescom wearing more or less elaborate costumes By Kilian Fichou and Tom Barfield Mega-selling first-person shooter franchise "Call of Duty" will blow open the Gamescom video games trade fair Tuesday, headlining a wave of new releases as the industry weathers a rough patch. Around 5,000 people, including game publishers, developers and fans, will attend the evening launch ceremony, before hundreds of thousands of gamers descend on the western German city of Cologne later in the week. Canadian TV presenter Geoff Keighley will from 8 p.m. introduce titles including "Call of Duty: Black Ops 7", one of two dozen installments in the long-running series, as part of a two-hour showreel of the industry's upcoming blockbuster productions. After a business and press day on Wednesday, Gamescom's doors will be flung open until Sunday to bring around 1,500 exhibitors together with swarms of fans, some of them dressed in elaborate costumes painstakingly drawn from the screens of their favorite titles. While last year's event drew 335,000 visitors, organizers hope 2025 can bring it back to pre-COVID levels of around 370,000. "We'll only know on the final day how many actually visited, but... the first day is sold out, all indicators are in the green," Felix Falk, managing director of Germany's GAME industry association that co-organizes Gamescom, told AFP ahead of opening day. One of the major draws to the vast halls of the Koelnmesse convention centre is the opportunity for hands-on time with the feast of the latest releases at the vast stands laid on by major firms. Nintendo is back after staying away last year, surfing on the success of its record-breaking Switch 2 console launch earlier this year. And Microsoft's Xbox division will be showing off its own portable console, slated for release towards the end of the year. But Japanese PlayStation maker Sony has elected to stay away in 2025. Among the hotly anticipated games unveiled this edition are new episodes of horror sagas "Silent Hill" and "Resident Evil". Indie hit "Hollow Knight" will get a sequel with "Silksong" after an eight-year wait, while Nintendo is cooking up "Metroid Prime 4", following up the beloved science-fiction action series. Exhibitors may be less ecstatic than fans at this year's Gamescom as the industry endures an extended rough patch. "The sector hasn't had an easy time of it in the last two years, there was a lot of consolidation, job cuts, some studios closed, some projects were ended prematurely," Falk said. "That's not unusual for the highly dynamic games industry but it's nevertheless not pretty when it happens," he added. Tracking website Game Industry Layoffs has tallied almost 30,000 job cuts since early 2023, with more than 4,000 this year alone. But revenue in the global games market should hold steady at just under $190 billion this year, data firm Newzoo has forecast. © 2025 AFP
Japan Today
2 days ago
- Japan Today
'Skibidi' and 'tradwife': Social media words added to Cambridge dictionary
Words popularised by Gen Z and Gen Alpha including "skibidi", "delulu", and "tradwife" are among 6,000 new entries to the online edition of the Cambridge Dictionary over the last year, its publisher said Monday. Cambridge University Press said tradwife, a portmanteau of traditional wife, reflected "a growing, controversial Instagram and TikTok trend that embraces traditional gender roles". The dictionary also took on the challenge of defining skibidi, a word popularised in online memes, as a term which had "different meanings such as cool or bad, or can be used with no real meaning". The gibberish word was spread by a YouTube channel called "Skibidi Toilet" and is associated with the mindless, "brain rot" content found on social media and consumed by Gen Alpha's overwhelmingly digital lifestyle. The dictionary defined delulu, derived from the word delusional, as "believing things that are not real or true, usually because you choose to". As an example, it cited a 2025 speech in parliament where Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used the phrase "delulu with no solulu". "It's not every day you get to see words like skibidi and delulu make their way into the Cambridge Dictionary," said Colin McIntosh, Lexical Programme manager at the Cambridge Dictionary. "We only add words where we think they'll have staying power. Internet culture is changing the English language and the effect is fascinating to observe and capture in the Dictionary." Other new phrases include "lewk", used to describe a unique fashion look and popularised by RuPaul's Drag Race, and "inspo", short for inspiration. Work from home culture has given rise to "mouse jiggler", referring to a way to pretend to work when you are not. There is also "forever chemical", man-made chemicals that stay in the environment for years and have gained traction as concerns grow about the irreversible impact of climate change on the health of humans and the plant. © 2025 AFP
