BERLIN: The Berlin Film Festival will pay tribute this year to Iranian director Jafar Panahi, organisers said on Tuesday, a month after the filmmaker was sentenced to six years in prison in Iran.
According to Panahi’s lawyers, he was jailed by an Iranian court last month for making a film without permission and inciting opposition protests. The court also banned him from writing or making films for 20 years, his lawyers say.
Panahi’s lawyer, Farideh Gheyrat, has already filed an appeal and hopes to convince a higher court to overturn what she called a “very hefty verdict” imposed by a tribunal mainly in charge of national security offences.
Panahi, whose film Offside won the Berlin festival’s Silver Bear award in 2006, had been named a member of this year’s jury at the festival that runs from February 10 till February 20.
“We are going to use every opportunity to protest against this drastic verdict,” Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick said in a statement.
Offside will be among the Panahi films screened in Berlin, one of the world’s top festivals. A panel discussion with Iranian filmmakers and artists on censorship and the restriction of freedom of opinion in Iran will take place on February 17.
Panahi, winner of many international awards and a supporter of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi in Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election, was arrested in March but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff has said the leader was not in favour of the jailing.
“The sentence was issued by the judiciary and neither reflects my opinion nor that of the president,” said Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, considered to be the president’s closest aide. Rahim-Mashaei said that he and Ahmadinejad especially disliked the 20-year work ban and deemed it irrelevant.
Panahi and other Iranian filmmakers supported the opposition Green Movement, led by Mir-Hossein Moussavi, before and after the June 2009 presidential election which gave Ahmadinejad a second term. Panahi accused the government of electoral fraud and refused to acknowledge the president’s re-election.
Iranian filmmakers have claimed that since Ahmadinejad became president in 2005, greater restrictions have been imposed on artistes, especially filmmakers.
REUTERS
WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM IANS
Published in The Express Tribune, January 20th, 2011.
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