Jafar Panahi has left Iran for the first time in 14 years after the heralded Iranian filmmaker’s longstanding travel was apparently lifted.
His wife, Tahereh Saeidi, shared a photo of them entering an undisclosed airport to her Instagram Tuesday night, writing, “After 14 years, Jafar’s ban was canceled and finally we are going to travel together for a few days…”
The image indicates the first time the director and political figure behind “The White Balloon,” “The Circle,” “Taxi” and most recently “No Bears” has left Iran since he was sentenced to a 20-year travel and filmmaking ban in 2010 for “making propaganda against the system” — a directive that to this point has not slowed his directing career but has held him to the nation’s borders.
In July 2022, Panahi was arrested and imprisoned after he protested the arrest of fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, who were detained for questioning the government response to a building collapse that left 40 dead. In February, he was released from his holding at Evin Prison 48 hours after he went on a hunger strike in protest of his unlawful imprisonment.
Panahi’s is best known for his 1995 film “The White Balloon,” which won the Camera d’Or at that year’s Cannes Film Festival and was submitted by Iran as its official Oscar entry. Most recently was 2022 “No Bears.” In his review for TheWrap in 2022, critic Ben Croll called it a “flat-out stunner.”
“Formally banned from making movies since 2010, Panahi works on the fly, turning his camera on himself in playful exercises that find creative inspiration in the restrictions meant to stifle,” Croll wrote. “That (government-imposed) project has found its most potent expression in this latest film, which is, in so many ways, about the urge to create no matter the personal or moral cost.”
