Jafar Panahi seems to have lost all hope of ever being released.
From his cell in Evin prison in Tehran, the director begins a hunger strike.
His wife, Tahereh Saeidi, was responsible for transmitting the director's announcement via her Instagram account.
"As a sign of protest against the illegal and inhuman and inhuman behavior of the judicial and security apparatus and this hostage-taking"
, the 62-year-old filmmaker has stopped eating since Bahman 12 of the Persian calendar, i.e. February 1 of our calendar.
“I will refuse to eat any food, drink and take any medicine until I am released. I will remain in this state until perhaps my lifeless body is released from prison
,” Jafar Panahi wrote.
However, on January 21, the dispatches announced that the Iranian justice was to decide on his possible release
judgment against my client had been canceled on October 15 and the Supreme Court referred the case to another court "
, had then explained the lawyer.
Today all that seems a long way off.
Read alsoJafar Panahi, filmmaker imprisoned but not gagged
The dissident artist has been locked up since July 2022. Arrested on July 8, he is "
accused of gathering and collusion against state security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic"
, explained Massoud Sétayechi, the justice spokesman. .
The director was demonstrating against the arrest of Mohammad Rasulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad with a group of filmmakers.
On parole since a judgment handed down in 2010 - at the time he had been imprisoned for two months - he was sentenced to serve his six-year prison sentence accompanied by a ban on directing or writing films for twenty years.
Considered one of the greatest Iranian directors, he has won numerous awards at international festivals.
The filmmaker notably obtained a Golden Lion in 2000 at Venice for
Le Cercle
, and the Screenplay Prize at Cannes in 2018 with
Three Faces
, three years after the Golden Bear in Berlin for
Taxi Tehran
.
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