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Banned film-maker Jafar Panahi says friends lost hope he would direct again

Speaking during his first visit to Cannes in 22 years, Panahi who has previously been imprisoned in Iran said he wasn’t doing ‘anything heroic’

Panahi’s clashes with authorities in Iran date as far back as 2003, when he was arrested at Tehran airport after returning from a film festival in Moscow. In 2010 he was sentenced to six years in jail for allegedly “endangering national security” after the “green movement” protests against Iran’s government. Panahi continued to make films in defiance of the authorities, including This Is Not a Film from 2011, which was shown at Cannes after being smuggled out of Iran on a USB drive hidden inside a cake, Closed Curtain, shot inside a house with the curtains closed, and which won the Silver Bear for best screenplay at the Berlin film festival in 2013 and Taxi Tehran, entirely shot inside cars, which won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2015.

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