Iranian director Zafar Panahi has faced a strange task in recent weeks: promoting his Oscar-nominated film as his homeland erupts in unrest and war.
“Apparently, I’m in celebration,” Panahi said, speaking through a translator on Zoom from New York on Tuesday morning. “But on the inside, I feel different.”
Panahi, 65, shot “It Was Just an Accident” secretly in Iran, where authorities monitor the media and filmmakers must approve their scripts to obtain film licenses. The film, which is shaped by his time in Tehran’s notoriously brutal Evin prison, is a revenge drama that is nominated for the upcoming Oscars in the Best Original Screenplay and International Film categories.
The filmmakers are eager to share with audiences that “it was just an accident,” which they consider to be “witnesses” to events in Iran. But, “When we agreed to have this campaign for the film, we didn’t think about these days,” he said.
Awards season is glamorous for Panahi, a mother and son living in Iran. He has spent months on the road promoting his film, but struggles to absorb the fast-moving news that directly affects his life.
“No matter how hard you try to update yourself from afar, it’s not the same as being there,” he said. “And you don’t know how much of it is true and how much isn’t.”
In January, Panahi’s Golden Globes experience was overshadowed by a video she saw on her phone while sitting in a line of traffic going through security for the show. Footage of Kahrizak overflowing from a morgue near Tehran left thousands dead and injured after the Iranian regime began a crackdown on protests.
“Security did not allow us to leave our cars, and I felt suffocated,” Panahi said. “When we arrived and (red carpet reporters) wanted to talk to me, I didn’t even have the ability to speak. I was stepping outside and trying to create balance in my mind. I went to smoke.”
After the ceremony, he said he skipped the parties because he “couldn’t really go on.”
Within two months, Panahi was traveling from Barcelona to New York to tape an interview on “The Daily Show” when he learned that the US and Israel had launched a joint attack on Iran.
“Maybe I checked my bags, I don’t remember,” he said. “I told myself I had to keep going for the next few days.”
Panahi said he had been trying to stay in touch with his family until Tuesday morning, with a complete internet blackout and communication severely disrupted in Iran following Saturday’s attack.
In the days since war broke out in the Middle East, there have been few glimmers of hope among Iranians, especially after news broke that the attacks had killed Iran’s hardline Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled the country with an iron grip for 36 years.
Panahi, along with 16 other artists and activists, including his Oscar-nominated co-screenwriter Mehdi Mahmoudian, signed a statement in January condemning Khamenei for authorizing the “mass and systematic killing of civilians.” Mahmoudian, who was in Tehran at the time, was quickly arrested by Iranian authorities for signing the letter.
“Like many other people who suffered during this period, hearing about this news made me both happy and sad,” Panahi said of Khamenei’s death. “In the last statement we gave, we said he should step aside and prosecute him, and we regret that we will no longer prosecute him.”
He said he relies mostly on Persian-language news sources to follow events — though not all are on his radar. During the interview, the director learned that the Israeli army had ordered residents to evacuate the neighborhood in Tehran where Evin prison is located. The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization, recently issued a statement calling for “protection and priority” for Iranian prisoners.
The news made Panahi immediately concerned for the safety of prisoners, including the “large number” of those detained after the recent protests and “those who have been incarcerated for many years”.
“What’s going to happen to them?” He said. “I don’t know, and we really need to think about it. I very much hope that the situation will not push the administration to use these prisoners as human shields.”
One day, Panahi said, she will try to process what is happening in Iran through her craft.
“What’s happening now is, of course, going to have an effect on me, and one day it’s going to reveal itself in one of my films.”
When Panahi finally returns to Iran, he faces imprisonment again.
In December, the government sentenced him “in absentia, to one year in prison, two years banned from leaving the country and a ban on membership in any political or social groups or organizations, on charges of propaganda against the regime,” his lawyer said in a statement at X.
Flights to Iran are currently canceled because of the conflict, but Panahi wants his press tour to end after the Oscars in LA on March 15.
“I really think there is a way,” Panahi said of returning to Iran. “Maybe one of the reasons I’m here is that my presence makes up for the presence of all the people who can’t be here. And in these conversations, in these events, maybe I can give their message to the world.”
