An Iranian filmmaker was applauded at home after winning the first prize of the Cannes Film Festival.
Jafar Panahi led to Tehran International Airport on Monday, two days after his Palme d’Or victory for revenge, it was just an accident.
Panahi has been imprisoned several times in Iran, more recently for having protested the detention of filmmakers criticizing the authorities. It was his first visit to Cannes in 15 years, where his films were shown in his absence because of a travel ban.
His winning film represented torture in Iranian prisons and sparked a back and forth between French and Iranian officials.
The famous director, who now holds the awards of the three main European film festivals, was seen while smiling and holding a bouquet of flowers while he was kissing his friends.
Among the crowd, there was his compatriot Iranian director Medhi Nadari, who shared images of the moment on Instagram, calling Panahi’s return to “History Creation”.
A person was heard shouting “woman, life, freedom” while Panahi crossed the airport, according to the news agency of the agency France. The sentence was the slogan of protests that broke out through Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in police custody in 2022.
In his speech of acceptance in Cannes, Panahi said: “What is most important now is our country and the freedom of our country” and called on the Iranians to “unite their forces”.
“No one should dare to tell us what type of clothes we should wear, what we have to do or what we should not do,” he said.
The victory of the film gave birth to a diplomatic row between French and Iranian officialsAfter the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, nicknamed him “a gesture of resistance against the oppression of the Iranian regime” in a post on X.
Irna, the Iranian state media, reported that a French diplomat had been summoned to Tehran so that he can officially protest comments as “insulting and unfounded”.
The return to Tehran fulfills a commitment that Panahi made by speaking to journalists in Cannes.
“As soon as I finished my work here, I will come back,” he said, adding “I will wonder what my next film will be.”
