Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi (Persian: جعفر پناهی, pronounced [d͡ʒæʔfæɹe pʰænɒ́ːhíː]; born 11 July 1960) is an Iranian filmmaker and actor. He is known internationally for his artistic contributions to post-1979 Revolution Iranian cinema, and he has been associated with the Iranian New Wave. His work, rooted in neorealism and centered on the lives of women, children, and the marginalized, constitutes a critical portrait of the social, political, and gendered structures of contemporary Iran.

Panahi began his career making short films and working as an assistant to Abbas Kiarostami. His debut feature, The White Balloon (1995), won the Caméra d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, marking the first major award for an Iranian film at that event. Panahi is one of only four directors in history—alongside Henri-Georges Clouzot, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Robert Altman—to win the top prizes at Europe's three major film festivals: the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the Golden Bear at Berlin, and the Golden Lion at Venice, awarded respectively for It Was Just an Accident (2025), Taxi (2015), and The Circle (2000). Among numerous accolades, he is the recipient of the Telluride Film Festival Silver Medallion and nominations for two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award.

Panahi's career has been marked by conflict with Iranian authorities. Starting with his third feature film, The Circle, which addresses the situation of women in Iran, his films have frequently been banned or censored in the country. In 2010, he was sentenced to six years in prison and a 20-year ban on filmmaking activities, based on charges of "propaganda against the Islamic Republic". Even under legal restrictions, Panahi continued to make films without permission, many of them produced semi-clandestinely. This Is Not a Film (2011), Closed Curtain (2013), Taxi (2015), and No Bears (2022) are works that often reflect, in a metacinematic way, on his own limitations as an artist under state surveillance. His legal confrontations are ongoing, with new sentences, such as a one-year prison sentence on charges of engaging in propaganda activities against the Iranian state.

In addition to his filmmaking, Panahi was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament in 2012, in recognition of his defense of freedom of expression. He won Time 100 for 2026.