Iran sentenced a prize-winning film director to a year in prison in absentia for “propaganda activities,” the latest move in a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent.
Jafar Panahi, whose It Was Just an Accident won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival, also faces travel restrictions and a ban on joining political groups, one of a number of times the artist has been convicted of crimes that international human rights groups say are politically motivated. His sentencing is part of a “surge in repression” marked in particular by an increase in executions of dissidents, the UN warned in an October briefing; the Nobel peace prize-winner Narges Mohammadi told Bloomberg that teachers and academics were also being targeted.