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Berlinale — Panahi Film “Illegal” Says Tehran

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The Good News Is , You’ve Won the Berlinale’s Best Screenplay Award……

A dog stole the show in Jafar Panahi’s new film, Closed Curtain. The performance by yet another persecuted species under the constraints of the Islamic Republic’s shariah law helped Jafar Panahi win the Silver Bear at the Berlinale for best screenplay in the film that observes a group of Iranians trying to avoid detection in a lakeside apartment.  The prize would be good news for anyone but Panahi, whose acclaim abroad for his scrutiny of life in Iran has been far too truthful for the Islamic regime.

Kambozya Partovi, co-director of the film "Parde" poses with the Silver Bear award for Best Script at the 63rd annual Berlin International Film Festival aka Berlinale, in Berlin, Germany,

Now word comes that Panahi’s film – which he was banned from accompanying to Berlin – is illegal. Who knows what awaits him and his cast back in Tehran?  Here’s the coverage from The Local, an English-language site in Germany, which seems to come from Agence France Presse..

Jafar Panahi - Bound for Trial?

Iran has protested against the awarding of a Silver Bear to Jafar Panahi for his film “Closed Curtain” (Parde) at the 63rd Berlin film festival, the ISNA news agency reported.

The award for best screen play went on Saturday to the dissident director and his long-time collaborator Kambuzia Partovi, for a film made secretly in defiance of a ban by the Tehran authorities.

“We have protested to the Berlin film festival organizers,” ISNA quoted the head of the Iran cinema organisation and deputy culture minister Javad Shamaqdari as saying on Monday.

“We believe that the Berlin fest organisers should correct their behaviour. Everyone knows that making a film and sending it outside the country needs permission.

“Making these films is illegal, but so far the Islamic republic has shown patience towards such illegal acts,” Shamaqdari said.

Panahi was detained for a documentary he tried to make on the unrest following Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election and banned from making more films for 20 years. He was given a six-year jail sentence but currently remains under house arrest.

But the director, who has picked up a series of prizes at major international festivals for socially critical movies that are outlawed in Iran, has been feted abroad as one of the most original voices of the Iranian new wave.

Although he was prevented from presenting the film in person in Berlin, Panahi himself appears on screen in his haunting feature about state oppression.

The picture was the front-runner in a poll of German critics published by Berlin’s daily Der Tagesspiegel newspaper, which called it “harrowing” and “courageous.”

“It is impossible to stop a thinker and a poet. Their thoughts bear fruit everywhere,” Partovi said, accepting the award because Panahi was not granted permission to travel.

More coverage from the Borneo Bulletin.

If you read German, here is what the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported today on its home page.

Panahi, who is not permitted to leave Iran, shared the Silver Bear with his co-director Kamboziya Partovi, who accepted the award in Berlin Saturday night.


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