He's still in the bloody dictatorship of Iran, he still faces charges of conspiring to make an anti-regime film... but, for now, he is home with his family.
Panahi is home!
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6 Comments
I get that his family is there, his life is there, and leaving would mean stopping the fight against an unjust, stolen government, but I can't see why he would stay in Iran. If you're going to be imprisoned for alleged thoughts, I don't see why you subject yourself to that. Panahi is far more fortunate than other people in his situation, and he has ties around the world that could assist him in leaving Iran. Why not leave?
This is good news, Jim. Heard yesterday. I hope he's able to flee the country eventually and move somewhere he can work and live in relative freedom. Do you think all the Cannes publicity--Kiarostami's letter and Binoche's speech--had anything to do with it? Or was it more about his hunger strike and the threat he'd become another martyr for the reformers? The hard-line regime is so inscrutable it's probably impossible to know. How about a little love his films? I've seen the Kiarostami-scripted CRIMSON GOLD--which features a great depiction of the Tehran vice police raiding a party where--gasp--boys and girls are congregating together. And I love OFFSIDE, a film about women's rights...(I hear some of you out there start to yawn)...to love soccer as much as men do. And it's mostly a comedy. About going to the big game and not quite getting there. The politics in his films always come through the characters and the story, are always organic, never superimposed just to make a point. Which makes for much better films for us, the international audience, but maybe also more threatening ones for the military regime at home?
I have to say he looks better after the hunger strike. Other than that, everything he's been through is appalling of course.
This is truly wonderful! :D I think this is incredible news.
Nick, I would imagine that he's staying in Iran because, other than his family being there, it is his country, and to leave it would probably be devastating.
Jim, this may appear pedantic, but Iran is actually not a dictatorship, and rather is a theocracy. That does not change its brutal nature, and in no way am I defending it, but Iran bases its legitimacy on a theological basis; dictatorships base their legitimacy purely on power.
Good point. I might better have used the term authoritarian or totalitarian. My aim was to emphasize that Ahmadinejad's regime -- like the USSR, or Mao's China, or Franco's Spain, or Hitler's Germany, or Ceausescu's Romania -- is an autocratic government run by a powerful figurehead and a few associates (even if they're clerics). Ahmadinejad, like many despots, uses religion as a prop, but Panahi's supposed "sins" were not religious in nature but political ones. He was accused of conspiring to make a film "critical of the regime." It's really about stifling dissent and maintaining political control.
Welcome back, Mr. Panahi. Now let's wait for that movie to surface.
And I've got a LOT of catching up to do at Scanners...
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