Jafar Panahi
Jafar Panâhi is an Iranian filmmaker and actor. He is known internationally for his artistically significant contributions to post-1979 Revolution Iranian cinema and has been associated with the Iranian New Wave. His work, deeply rooted in neorealism and centered on the lives of women, children, and the marginalized, constitutes a powerful critical portrait of the social, political, and gender structures of contemporary Iran.
Panahi began his career making short films and working as an assistant to Abbas Kiarostami. His debut feature, The White Balloon, won the Caméra d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, marking the first major award for an Iranian film at that event. Panahi is one of only four directors in history—alongside Henri-Georges Clouzot, Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Altman—to win the top prizes at Europe's three major film festivals: the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the Golden Bear at Berlin, and the Golden Lion at Venice, awarded respectively for It Was Just an Accident, Taxi, and The Circle. Among numerous accolades, he is the recipient of Telluride Film Festival Silver Medallion and nominations for two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award.
Panahi's career has been inextricably marked by conflict with Iranian authorities. Starting with his third feature film, The Circle, which addresses the situation of women in Iran, his films have frequently been banned or censored in the country. In 2010, the filmmaker was sentenced to six years in prison and a 20-year ban on filmmaking activities, based on charges of "propaganda against the Islamic Republic." Even under legal restrictions, Panahi continued to make films without permission, many of them produced semi-clandestinely. This Is Not a Film, Closed Curtain, Taxi, and No Bears are works that often reflect, in a metacinematic way, on his own limitations as an artist under state surveillance. His legal confrontations remain ongoing, with new sentences such as the in absentia prison term decreed in 2025.
In addition to his filmmaking, Panahi was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament in 2012, in recognition of his defense of freedom of expression.
Early life and education
Jafar Panahi was born in Mianeh, Iran, to an Iranian Azerbaijani family, which he has described as working-class. He grew up with four sisters and two brothers. His father worked as a house painter. His family spoke Azerbaijani at home, but Persian with other Iranians. When he was ten years old he used an 8 mm film camera. He also acted in one film and assisted Kanoon's library director in running a program that taught children how to operate a film camera.Starting at age 12, Panahi worked after school in order to afford to go and see films. His impoverished childhood helped form the humanistic worldview of his films.
At age 20, Panahi was conscripted into the Iranian Army and served in the Iran–Iraq War, working as an army cinematographer from 1980 to 1982. In 1981, he was captured by Kurdish rebels and held for 76 days.
From his war experiences, he made a documentary that was eventually shown on TV. After completing his military service, Panahi enrolled at the College of Cinema and TV in Tehran, where he studied filmmaking and especially appreciated the works of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Luis Buñuel, and Jean-Luc Godard. There he first met and befriended filmmaker Parviz Shahbazi and cinematographer Farzad Jodat, who shot all of Panahi's early work. During college he interned at the Bandar Abbas Center on the Persian Gulf Coast, where he made his first short documentary films. He also began working as an assistant director on his professor's films before graduating in 1988.
Early career
Panahi made several short documentary films for Iranian television through the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting's Channel 2. His first short film, The Wounded Heads, was a documentary about the illegal mourning tradition of head slashing in the Azerbaijan region of northern Iran. The film documents a mourning ceremony for the third Shi'ite Imam, Imam Hossein, in which people hit their heads with knives until they bled. Panahi had to shoot in secret and the film was banned for several years. In 1988 Panahi filmed The Second Look, a behind-the-scenes documentary short on the making of Kambuzia Partovi's film Golnar. It focuses on the puppet maker for Partovi's film and his relationship with his puppets. It was not released until 1993. In 1990 he worked as an assistant director on Partovi's film The Fish.In 1992 Panahi made his first narrative short film, The Friend, an homage to Kiarostami's first short film, The Bread and Alley. That same year Panahi made his second narrative short, The Final Exam. Both films starred non-professional actors Ali Azizollahi and Mehdi Shahabi and won awards for Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing at Iran's National TV Festival that year. Inspired by a story of a young Luis Buñuel once contacting successful film director Jean Epstein to ask for a job in filmmaking, Panahi left a message on Kiarostami's answering machine saying that he loved his films and asking for a job on his next film. Kiarostami hired Panahi as his assistant director for the film Through the Olive Trees.
Career as a film director
''The White Balloon'' (1995)
In 1995 Panahi made his feature film debut, The White Balloon, produced by IRIB-Channel 2, Ferdos Films and the Farabi Cinema Foundation. Initially titled Happy New Year, Panahi developed the original story with Parviz Shahbazi and attempted to get funding from IRIB's Channel 1 with the expectation that it would be a short film, but his proposal was rejected. He then showed his original treatment for the film to Kiarostami during the shooting of Through the Olive Trees. Kiarostami encouraged Panahi to make the idea into a feature and agreed to write the script. During their car rides to set while shooting, Kiarostami would dictate the film's script while Panahi taped the conversation and typed the script. Kiarostami also helped Panahi secure funding from IRIB's Channel 2. While casting the film, Panahi traveled throughout Iran in order to include all of the diverse ethnicities of his country as characters in the film. He 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. He 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. He also cast professional actress Anna Borkowska as an Armenian woman.In the film Razieh, a strong-willed little girl in Tehran, wants to buy a lucky goldfish for the upcoming Iranian New Year celebration, but struggles to get and hold on to the 500-toman banknote needed to purchase the fish. 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. 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. Filming began in early April 1994 in Kashan, Iran and continued until early June. Panahi has stated that during the making of his feature debut he "wanted to prove to myself that I can do the job, that I can finish a feature film successfully and get good acting out of my players." He also stated that "In a world where films are made with millions of dollars, we made a film about a little girl who wants to buy a fish for less than a dollar – this is what we're trying to show." In Iran, films depicting children are the most likely to avoid censorship or political controversy, and The White Balloon was screened exclusively in theatres that specialized in children's films. Because of this the film had low attendance on its initial run in Iranian theatres, with only 130,000 tickets sold.
It went on to win four prizes in Iran at the Isfahan Film Festival for Children and Young Adults and at the Fajr International Film Festival. For several years after its release, Kanoon's Channel 2 would broadcast the film every year on New Year's Day. Outside of Iran The White Balloon received excellent reviews and was shown at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Camera d'Or. It also won the Golden Award of the Governor of Tokyo for Best Film and the Bronze Dragon for Best Film of Young Cinema at the 1995 Tokyo International Film Festival, the International Jury Award at the 1995 São Paulo International Film Festival and the Best Film Award at the 1996 Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival. It was Iran's official submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 68th Academy Awards; however, the Iranian government asked the Academy to withdraw the film after Iran's relations with the US began to deteriorate. The Academy refused to withdraw the film, which was not nominated, and 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.