Iranian director Jafar Panahi, the Palme d’Or winner whose searing drama “It Was Just an Accident” is a top contender in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category, has issued a plea for help in the wake of the Islamic Republic’s violent crackdown on the protests that have consumed his country in recent weeks.
“The Islamic Republic has entirely lost its legitimacy, and now there is no more doubt of that,” he told TheWrap on Monday in a passionate conversation that brought his interpreter to tears.
“It appears that the regime is finding itself at a dead end, and the protests this year seem to be the most important of anything that’s happened all these years,” he added. “And because it is about its existence or non-existence, it is going to do anything.”
Panahi said he became particularly worried in the last few days, when phone and internet was shut down after millions of Iranians had taken to the streets in anti-government protests.
“The internet and the phones are all shut down,” he said. “We cannot call cell phones or landlines; everything is disconnected. When they shut down the internet completely, we knew what was going on: It means a massacre is coming.”
On Saturday, Panahi and exiled Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof issued a letterwarning that the regime has “once again resorted to its most blatant tools of repression.”
And on Sunday, as he was on his way to the Golden Globes, where “It Was Just an Accident” was nominated for four awards, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, he watched online videos out of Iran of the government’s response to the mass demonstrations, which have resulted in more than 500 deaths so far, according to the Associated Press.
“They told me that I should not watch the videos, but I could not resist,” he said. “And so I was really not in a good mood the entire day.”
The difference between these protests and previous ones, he said, is that “this time protesters have come out from all echelons of a society. And if they become despaired and hopeless, it is going to be very, very difficult for the next few years to deal with this regime.
He added: “This is why the Islamic Republic is being so forceful and violent. And of course, everyone is worried about their fellow Iranians and their friends, family members, colleagues, anyone who gets arrested and is feared to be dead.”
Asked what could be done by the international community to help Iran, Panahi paused. “I don’t know what can be done,” he said. “But we are in a situation that anyone and everyone around the world – journalists, citizens, politicians, anybody – can do something. Anything they can do, they must.”
“It Was Just an Accident” was inspired by time Panahi spent in prison for what the regime said was anti-government propaganda. He has been arrested, charged and jailed repeatedly over the last decade-plus, during which he has surreptitiously shot several films despite an official ban on making movies. His new film, which he completed in Paris, deals with a handful of former political prisoners who believe they’ve found the jailer who tortured them years earlier.
Since the fall, Panahi has been promoting the film outside Iran, spending significant time in the United States as the movie has become a strong awards contender. In absentia, he was recently sentenced to another year in prison. But he has repeatedly said that he will return to his home country once he has finished his campaign duties, and on Monday he reiterated that recent events have not changed his mind.
“As soon as I’m done with the Oscar campaign, I will do so,” he said. “I have been saying this for four months. From the first day that the campaign started, I mentioned that I will stay here until we are done, and then I will return to Iran.”
And does he think that the international attention and acclaim that his film has received will insulate him from the harshest treatment, or will it make him a bigger target?
“When you see people going on the streets and many of them are killed, many of them are arrested, many of them are wounded, you’re really not thinking about such things,” he said bluntly.
“I just want to reiterate that I am asking for the help of all people around the world – all journalists, human-rights organizations, anyone who can do something that they think is going to be helpful. With every minute that they delay help, many innocent people are getting killed.”
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