Iranian filmmaker Panahi urges 'freedom' as he wins Cannes top prize
By Adam Plowright, Alice Hackman and Fiachra Gibbons
Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi won the Palme d'Or top prize at the Cannes film festival on Saturday, using his acceptance speech to urge his country to unite for "freedom".
The latest film from the 64-year-old, "It Was Just an Accident", tells the tale of five ordinary Iranians confronted with a man they believed tortured them in jail.
The core of the political and wry drama examines the moral dilemma faced by people if they are given an opportunity to take revenge on their oppressors.
Panahi used his own experiences in jail to write the screenplay.
"Let's set aside all problems, all differences. What matters most right now is our country and the freedom of our country," he told the VIP-studded audience on the French Riviera.
The leading light in the Iranian New Wave cinema movement has vowed to return to Tehran after the Cannes Festival despite the risks of prosecution.
Banned from making films in 2010 and imprisoned twice, Panahi argued that cinema should be a space for free expression.
"No one has the right to tell you what you (filmmakers) should do and what you should not do," he told the audience, according to remarks in Persian which were translated into French by an interpreter.
Iran was shaken by the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests in 2022 sparked by after the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for allegedly flouting dress rules for women.
The demonstrations were quashed in a crackdown that saw thousands detained, according to the United Nations, and hundreds shot dead by security forces, according to activists.
Among the other Cannes awards, Brazil's Wagner Moura, best known for playing Pablo Escobar in "Narcos" -- picked up the best actor award for his performance in police thriller "The Secret Agent".
Its director, Kleber Mendonca Filho, also won the best director prize, making it a good evening for Brazil.
France's Nadia Melliti continued her fairytale fortnight in Cannes by clinching the gong for best actress.
Melliti, who was spotted in the street by a casting agent and had never appeared in a film, plays a 17-year-old Muslim girl struggling with her homosexuality in Hafsia Herzi's "The Little Sister".
"Sentimental Value" by Norway's Joachim Trier, a moving family drama given a 19-minute standing ovation on Thursday, picked up the second prize Grand Prix.
Saturday's closing ceremony was the final act of a drama-filled day in Cannes that saw the glitzy seaside resort suffer a more than five-hour power cut.
The outage knocked out traffic lights and had visitors and locals scrambling for paper money because cash machines were out-of-order and restaurants were left unable to process card payments.
Local officials said a suspected arson attack on a substation and vandalism of an electricity pylon had caused the disruption.
German director Mascha Schilinski joked that she had "had difficulty writing her speech" because of the black-out as she accepted a jury prize for her "Sound of Falling".
Panahi has won a host of prizes at European film festivals and showcased his debut film "The White Balloon" in Cannes in 1995 which won an award for best first feature.
The head of the Cannes 2025 jury, French actress Juliette Binoche, paid tribute to "It Was Just an Accident".
"This is a film that emerges from a place of resistance, a place of survival, and it felt essential to bring it put it on top today," she told reporters afterwards. "Art will always prevail, humanity will always prevail."
Panahi has always refused to stop making films and his efforts to smuggle them out to foreign distributors and film festivals has become the stuff of legend.
A year after being handed a 20-year ban on filmmaking in 2010 he dispatched a documentary with the cheeky title "This is Not a Film" to the Cannes Festival on a flash drive stashed in a cake.
"I'm alive as long as I'm making films. If I'm not making films, then what happens to me no longer matters," he told AFP this week.
© 2025 AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Today
4 hours ago
- Japan Today
Trump travel ban in effect, citizens from 12 nations barred from US
US President Donald Trump (R), seen here with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has slapped a travel ban on a dozen countries President Donald Trump's sweeping new travel ban came into effect early Monday immediately after midnight, barring citizens from a dozen nations from entering the United States and reviving a divisive measure from his first term. The move is expected to disrupt refugee pathways and further restrict immigration as the Trump administration expands its crackdown on illegal entries. Many of the nations covered by the restrictions have adversarial relations with the United States, such as Iran and Afghanistan, while others face severe crises, like Haiti and Libya. In announcing his restrictions last week, Trump said the new measure was spurred by a recent "terrorist attack" on Jews in Colorado. The group had been protesting in solidarity with hostages held in Gaza when they were assaulted by a man the White House said had overstayed his visa. That attack, Trump said, "underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted" or who overstay their visas. The move bans all travel to the United States by nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, according to the White House. Trump also imposed a partial ban on travelers from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. Some temporary work visas from those countries will be allowed. New countries could be added, Trump warned, "as threats emerge around the world." Mehria, a 23-year-old woman from Afghanistan who applied for refugee status, said the new rules have trapped her and many other Afghans in uncertainty. "We gave up thousands of hopes and our entire lives... on a promise from America, but today we are suffering one hell after another," she told AFP. The ban will not apply to athletes competing in the 2026 World Cup, which the United States is co-hosting with Canada and Mexico, or in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, Trump's order said. Nor will it apply to diplomats from the targeted countries. United Nations rights chief Volker Turk warned that "the broad and sweeping nature of the new travel ban raises concerns from the perspective of international law." U.S. Democratic lawmakers and elected officials blasted the ban as draconian and unconstitutional. "I know the pain that Trump's cruel and xenophobic travel bans inflict because my family has felt it firsthand," congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, who is Iranian-American, posted Sunday on X. "We will fight this ban with everything we have." Rumors of a new travel ban had circulated following the Colorado attack, with Trump's administration vowing to pursue "terrorists" living in the United States on visas. U.S. officials said suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national according to court documents, was in the country illegally having overstayed a tourist visa, but that he had applied for asylum in September 2022. Trump's new travel ban notably does not include Egypt. His proclamation said Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and war-torn Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen lacked "competent" central authorities for processing passports and vetting. Iran was included because it is a "state sponsor of terrorism," the order said. For the other countries, Trump's order cited an above-average likelihood that people would overstay their visas. © 2025 AFP
Japan Today
4 hours ago
- Japan Today
Gaza-bound aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg reaches Israeli port
The Madleen set sail from Italy on June 1 to raise awareness of food shortages in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip By Jack Guez and Benoit Finck A Gaza-bound aid boat reached Israel's Ashdod port on Monday after being intercepted by Israeli forces, preventing the dozen activists on board including Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg from reaching the blockaded Palestinian territory. An AFP photographer said that the Madleen, which organizers said was intercepted in international waters overnight, reached the port north of Gaza at around 8:45 p.m., escorted by the Israeli navy. The Madleen set sail from Italy on June 1 to raise awareness of food shortages in the Gaza Strip, which the United Nations has called the "hungriest place on Earth". After more than 20 months of war, triggered by Palestinian militant group Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the U.N. has warned that Gaza's entire population is at risk of famine. At around 4:02 a.m. on Monday, Israeli troops "forcibly intercepted" the vessel as it approached Gaza, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said. "If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped," Thunberg said in pre-recorded footage shared by the coalition. Video from the group shows the activists with their hands up as Israeli forces boarded the vessel, with one of them saying nobody was injured prior to the interception. Israel's foreign ministry, in a post on social media, said "all the passengers of the 'selfie yacht' are safe and unharmed", adding it expected the activists to return to their home countries. Turkey condemned the interception as a "heinous attack" and Iran denounced it as "a form of piracy" in international waters. In May, another Freedom Flotilla ship, the Conscience, reported it was struck by drones in an attack the group blamed on Israel. In 2010, an Israeli commando raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was part of a similar attempt to breach the naval blockade, left 10 civilians dead. On Sunday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said the blockade, in place for years before the Israel-Hamas war, was needed to prevent Palestinian militants from importing weapons. The Madleen was intercepted about 185 kilometers west of the coast of Gaza, according to coordinates from the coalition. President Emmanuel Macron requested that the six French nationals aboard the boat "be allowed to return to France as soon as possible", a presidential official said. Two of them are journalists, Omar Fayyad of Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Yanis Mhamdi who works for online publication Blast, according to media rights group Reporters Without Borders, which condemned their detention and called for their "immediate release". Al Jazeera "categorically denounces the Israeli incursion", the network said in a statement, demanding the reporter's release. Adalah, an Israeli NGO offering legal support for the country's Arab minority, said the activists on board the Madleen had requested its services, and that the group was likely to be taken to a detention centre before being deported. Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza to alleviate widespread shortages of food and basic supplies. In what organizers called a "symbolic act", hundreds of people launched a land convoy on Monday from Tunisia with the aim of reaching Gaza. Israel recently allowed some deliveries to resume after barring them for more than two months and began working with the newly formed, U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. But humanitarian agencies have criticized the GHF and the United Nations refuses to work with it, citing concerns over its practices and neutrality. Dozens of people have been killed near GHF distribution points since late May, according to Gaza's civil defence agency. In Gaza City on Monday, displaced Palestinian Umm Mohammed Abu Namous told AFP that she hopes "that all nations stand with us and help us, and that we receive 10 boats instead of one". "We are innocent people," she said. "Our children are dying of hunger... We do not want to lose more children because of hunger." The Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 54,880 people, the majority civilians, have been killed in the territory since the start of the war. The U.N. considers these figures reliable. Out of 251 taken hostage during the Hamas attack, 54 are still held in Gaza including 32 the Israeli military says are dead. © 2025 AFP
Japan Today
a day ago
- Japan Today
Iran says no sanctions relief in U.S. nuclear proposal
Iran's parliament speaker said on Sunday that the latest U.S. proposal for a nuclear deal does not include the lifting of sanctions, state media reported as negotiations appeared to have hit a roadblock. The two foes have held five rounds of Omani-mediated talks since April, seeking to replace a landmark agreement between Tehran and world powers that set restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief, before U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the accord in 2018 during his first term. In a video aired on Iranian state TV, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said that "the U.S. plan does not even mention the lifting of sanctions". He called it a sign of dishonesty, accusing the Americans of seeking to impose a "unilateral" agreement that Tehran would not accept. "The delusional U.S. president should know better and change his approach if he is really looking for a deal," Ghalibaf said. On May 31, after the fifth round of talks, Iran said it had received "elements" of a U.S. proposal, with officials later taking issue with "ambiguities" in the draft text. The U.S. and its Western allies have long accused the Islamic republic of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, a charge Iran has consistently denied, insisting that its atomic program was solely for peaceful purposes. Key issues in the negotiations have been the removal of biting economic sanctions and uranium enrichment. Tehran says it has the right to enrich uranium under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while the Trump administration has called any Iranian enrichment a "red line". Trump, who has revived his "maximum pressure" campaign of sanctions on Iran since taking office in January, has repeatedly said it will not be allowed any uranium enrichment under a potential deal. On Tuesday, Iran's top negotiator, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said the country "will not ask anyone for permission to continue enriching uranium". According to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state in the world that enriches uranium up to 60 percent -- close to the 90 percent threshold needed for a nuclear warhead. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday rejected the latest U.S. proposal and said enrichment was "key" to Iran's nuclear program. The IAEA Board of Governors is scheduled to meet in Vienna starting Monday and discuss Iran's nuclear activities. On Sunday the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran warned it could reduce its level of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog if it adopts a resolution against it. "Certainly, the IAEA should not expect the Islamic Republic of Iran to continue its broad and friendly cooperation," the Iranian agency's spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told state TV. Araghchi on Friday accused European powers of "opting for malign action against Iran at the IAEA Board of Governors", warning on X that "Iran will react strongly against any violation of its rights". A quarterly report from the IAEA issued last week cited a "general lack of cooperation" from Iran and raised concerns over undeclared nuclear material. Tehran has rejected the report as politically motivated and based on "forged documents" it said had been provided by its arch foe Israel. © 2025 AFP
