Jafar Panahi is an Iranian film director, screenwriter, and film editor, commonly associated with the Iranian New Wave film movement.
65 Facts About Jafar Panahi
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Jafar Panahi was quickly recognized as one of Iran's most influential filmmakers.
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Jafar Panahi's films were often banned in Iran, but he continued to receive international acclaim from film theorists and critics and won numerous awards, including the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival for The Mirror, the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for The Circle, and the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Offside.
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Jafar Panahi's films are known for their humanistic perspective on life in Iran, often focusing on the hardships of children, the impoverished, and women.
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In 2018 he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay for 3 Faces; he was unable to leave Iran to attend the festival, so his daughter, Solmaz Jafar Panahi, read his statement and received the award on his behalf.
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Jafar Panahi was born in Mianeh, Iran to an Iranian Azerbaijani family.
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Jafar Panahi has described his family as working class and grew up with four sisters and two brothers.
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Jafar Panahi's family spoke Azerbaijani at home, but Persian with other Iranians.
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Jafar Panahi acted in one film and assisted Kanoon's library director in running a program that taught children how to operate a film camera.
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Jafar Panahi began working as an assistant director on his Professor's films before graduating in 1988.
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Jafar Panahi made several short documentary films for Iranian television through the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting's Channel 2.
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Jafar Panahi had to shoot in secret and the film was banned for several years.
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In 1988 Jafar Panahi filmed The Second Look, a behind-the-scenes documentary short on the making of Kambuzia Partovi's film Golnar.
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In 1992 Jafar Panahi made his first narrative short film, The Friend, an homage to Kiarostami's first short film, The Bread and Alley.
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That same year Jafar Panahi made his second narrative short, The Final Exam.
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In 1995 Jafar Panahi made his feature film debut, The White Balloon, produced by IRIB- Channel 2, Ferdos Films and the Farabi Cinema Foundation.
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Jafar Panahi then showed his original treatment for the film to Kiarostami during the shooting of Through the Olive Trees.
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Kiarostami encouraged Jafar Panahi to make the idea into a feature and agreed to write the script.
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Jafar Panahi found lead actress Aida Mohammadkhani at the first school that he visited and immediately cast her as Razieh, but auditioned 2,600 young boys for the role of Razieh's brother Ali before settling on Mohsen Kalifi.
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Jafar Panahi cast non-professionals in most of the supporting roles, including a real fish seller he found in the Rasht market and a college student to portray the young soldier.
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Jafar Panahi cast professional actress Anna Borkowska as an Armenian woman.
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Jafar Panahi worked closely with Mohammadkhani, gaining her trust and acting out each scene for her to mimic while still adding her own personality to the performance.
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Jafar Panahi was most concerned about Mohammadkhani being able to cry on cue, so he would have her stare at him off camera while he started to cry, causing her to cry.
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The Academy refused to withdraw the film, which was not nominated, and Jafar Panahi was forbidden by the Iranian government to travel to the Sundance Film Festival or to participate in phone interviews with US reporters to promote the film.
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Jafar Panahi was inspired to make the film when while attending the 1996 Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea he noticed a young girl sitting alone on a park bench staring blankly into space, and realized that he had seen this same thing countless times in Iran and never paid attention to it.
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Jafar Panahi saw the lead actress, Nargess Mamizadeh, in a park one day and immediately offered her the role.
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Jafar Panahi adopted a different camera style to depict each of the four main protagonists' lives.
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Jafar Panahi submitted the film to the Venice Film Festival without getting a permit from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
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Jafar Panahi was worried that the Ministry would "confiscate and mutilate" all copies of the film, so he made multiple copies and hid them all over Iran.
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The story is based on real events that Jafar Panahi first heard about when Kiarostami told him the story while they were stuck in a traffic jam on their way to one of Kiarostami's photographic exhibits.
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Jafar Panahi was extremely moved by the story and Kiarostami agreed to write the script for him to direct.
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Jafar Panahi submitted the film to the Cannes Film Festival without being granted a permit from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
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Jafar Panahi had applied for the permit but the Ministry demanded several cuts be made to the film.
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Not wanting to miss the World Cup tournament, Jafar Panahi ignored the Ministry and began shooting the film.
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The film was shot in 39 days and in order to move unnoticed through large crowds Jafar Panahi used digital video for the first time so as to have a smaller, more inconspicuous camera.
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Jafar Panahi officially listed his Assistant Director as the Director of the film so as not to attract the attention of the Ministry of Guidance or the Disciplinary Forces of Tehran, but towards the end of the films shooting a newspaper article about the making of the film listed Jafar Panahi as the director and both organizations attempted to shut the film down and confiscate the footage.
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Only a sequence that takes place on a bus remained to be filmed so Jafar Panahi was able to continue filming without being caught.
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The film premiered in competition at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, where Jafar Panahi was awarded with the Silver Bear Jury Grand Prix.
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Jafar Panahi had already set up distribution for the film all over Iran and the film was predicted to break all box office records.
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Jafar Panahi has stated that of his films Offside is "probably the one that people have seen the most" in Iran.
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Jafar Panahi directed a segment of the anthology film The Year of the Everlasting Storm which will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in July 2021.
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On 15 April 2001 Jafar Panahi stopped over at JFK International Airport in New York City en route from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires, where he was to participate in a film festival.
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Jafar Panahi was immediately detained by police officers who wanted to fingerprint and photograph him; Panahi refused both requests on the grounds that he was not a criminal.
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Jafar Panahi was threatened with jail and refused an interpreter or a phone call.
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Jafar Panahi was finally photographed and sent back to Hong Kong.
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In 2003 Jafar Panahi was arrested and interrogated for four hours by the Information Ministry in Iran, then released after being encouraged to leave Iran.
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On 30 July 2009 Mojtaba Saminejad, an Iranian blogger and human rights activist writing from Iran, reported that Jafar Panahi had been arrested at the cemetery in Tehran where mourners had gathered near the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan.
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Jafar Panahi was able to contact friends in the film industry, both in Iran and internationally, and filmmakers and the news media pressured the Iranian government to release him.
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In September 2009 Jafar Panahi travelled to Montreal to act as the Head of the Jury at the 2009 Montreal World Film Festival.
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Jafar Panahi openly supported and appeared in photographs with Iranian Green Movement protesters at the festival.
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Jafar Panahi has since been allowed to move more freely but he cannot travel outside Iran.
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On 26 October 2012 Jafar Panahi was announced as a co-winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize.
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Jafar Panahi shared the award with Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh.
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In June 2013 Jafar Panahi was invited to join The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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On 11 July 2022, Jafar Panahi was arrested when he went to the prosecutor's office to follow up on the situation of another film-maker, Mohammad Rasoulof.
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Jafar Panahi was the third director detained in less than a week.
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On 1 February 2023, Jafar Panahi began a hunger strike, demanding his release from prison.
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In October 2012 Kiarostami told a journalist that Jafar Panahi had completed a new film that he predicted would be screened in film festivals.
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Jafar Panahi was awarded the Golden Bear for the film at the festival.
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In December 2014 Jafar Panahi won a 2014 Motion Picture Association Academy Film Fund grant for $25,000 for the screenplay Flower.
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Jafar Panahi was awarded the grant at the 8th annual Asia Pacific Screen Awards in Brisbane, Australia.
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Jafar Panahi's style is often described as an Iranian form of neorealism.
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Jafar Panahi says his style can be described as "humanitarian events interpreted in a poetic and artistic way".
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Jafar Panahi is married to Tahereh Saidi, whom he first met in college when she was working as a nurse.
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Panah Jafar Panahi attended the University of Tehran and in 2009 made his first short film, The First Film, which was screened at the 2009 Montreal World Film Festival.