- Internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, slated to serve as a jury member at the [63rd Cannes Film Festival] festival, couldn't attend because he was being held in Tehran’s Evin prison....
In March 2010, plainclothes security officials raided Panahi’s Tehran home and arrested him along with his wife, daughter and 15 house guests. Though Iranian authorities shortly released the others, they held on to Panahi, accusing him of “making a film against the regime following the post-election events," according to the French daily Le Figaro.
- Despite this, the prosecutor's office in Tehran argues that Panahi’s imprisonment has no political motive.
- "The arrest of Jafar Panahi is not because he is an artist or for political reason[s]," prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told the Iranian Students News Agency....
- Authorities had previously arrested Panahi, a supporter of the protest movement that emerged after last year's disputed presidential elections held in June, for participating in a memorial service for Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman killed in July 2009 allegedly at the hands of a pro-government militiaman. ("Iran: Cannes 2010: Imprisoned filmmaker Jafar Panahi is honored at film festival," Babylon & Beyond, May 13, 2010)
The director's arrest and imprisonment is so counterproductive for the current Iranian regime, as Panahi's "Offside" (2006) is a film which suggest the richness and vitality of modern Iranian culture.(see "Jafar Panahi on Offside," Payvand's Iran News 7 March 2007)
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