The News
An Iranian dissident filmmaker, who was forbidden from leaving Iran for 15 years, won the top prize at the Cannes film festival for his movie It Was Just an Accident.
Tehran has banned Jafar Panahi’s films, but he continues to direct them clandestinely in Iran.
The plot was inspired by Panahi’s time in jail three years ago, and despite Iran’s restrictions, the filmmaker refuses to live in exile: “No one should dare tell us what kind of clothes we should wear, what we should do or what we should not do.”
The Palme D’Or award has stirred diplomatic tensions; Iran summoned France’s Tehran envoy Sunday over his “insulting” comment calling Panahi’s win “a gesture of resistance against the Iranian regime’s oppression.”
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