A Crime to Make a Movie

„In February 2010, when Jafar Panahi, his wife and daughter, along with Rasoulof and a dozen others, were arrested, the outrage was immediately condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the foreign ministers of France and Germany, as well as prominent directors, actors and film critics. An Apr. 30 petition from Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Moore, the Coen brothers and many other auteurs ended with the plea, Like artists everywhere, Iran's filmmakers should be celebrated, not censored, repressed, and imprisoned. The following month, Panahi was to be a juror at the Cannes festival; when the government denied his passage, a chair was set aside for him and remained symbolically empty. Today he has a real seat in a jail in Tehran.

In the August interview with Agence France-Presse, Panahi said, When a filmmaker does not make films, it is as if he is jailed. Even when he is freed from the small jail, he finds himself wandering in a larger jail. This was when he thought he would be forbidden from pursuing his art, craft and life's blood. A finished film, well, it can get banned, he said, but not the director. Now we know a director — this most estimable one — can get banned, imprisoned, shut up and locked in. And if all the muscle of the United States and the European Union can't stop Iran from its nuclear dream, how can a directors' petition convince the Ayatullahs to give freedom to a filmmaker who dared to tell the truth about his country?”