Iran spars with France over dissident filmmaker's Cannes triumph
Iran hit out at France on Sunday for praising a dissident filmmaker whose tale of revenge against the Iranian state triumphed at the Cannes Film Festival. Jafar Panahi, a former prisoner in Iran, won the top prize in Cannes – the Palme d'Or – for his film It Was Just an Accident, which depicts five Iranians confronting a man they believed tortured them in jail. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot praised the film as a "gesture of resistance against the Iranian regime's oppression". Tehran is under widespread sanctions for cracking down on dissent, most notably after anti-regime protests that followed the 2022 death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody. That led to Iran's Foreign Ministry summoning France's top diplomat in Tehran on Sunday, state news agency IRNA reported. "Following the insulting remarks and unfounded allegations by the French Minister..., the charge d'affaires of that country in Tehran has been summoned to the ministry," it said. The state news agency had previously hailed Panahi's victory as having "made history for Iranian cinema", without delving into the film's contents. It was the first Iranian win in the Palme d'Or since Abbas Kiarostami received the honour for Taste of Cherry in 1997. Panahi, 64, was detained in Tehran's Evin prison for almost seven months on charges of spreading anti-government propaganda. He was released in 2023 two days after beginning a hunger strike. Panahi won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 for his filmThe Circle. In 2015, he won the Golden Bear in Berlin forTaxi Tehran, and in 2018, he won the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes forThree Faces. His latest film depicts an Iranian torture victim who believes he has encountered Peg Leg, a one-legged state interrogator responsible for mistreating him and many others. The National's film review described it as a production that "rages against the Iranian state".
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