A Tehran Revolutionary Court has handed the director of 'It Was Just an Accident' a new prison term, asset confiscation and two-year bans on travel and social media, his lawyer says.
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, the Palme d'Or-winning director of 'It Was Just an Accident', has been sentenced in absentia to five years and one month in prison by Branch 26 of Tehran's Revolutionary Court, according to his lawyer, Mostafa Nili, who disclosed the verdict to the Iranian news site Emtedad. The ruling also orders the confiscation of all his assets, a two-year ban on social media activity and a two-year travel ban. The charges behind the new conviction have not been publicly clarified.
Nili said the verdict was issued without Panahi being notified of a hearing, and that court documents described him as abroad and unreachable even though he returned to Iran on 30 March and appeared before an investigative court in August in a separate case. The lawyer added that Panahi's bank accounts were frozen the previous week and that the family learned of the sentence when they visited the sentence execution branch of the Culture and Media Prosecutor's Office. According to Nili, Panahi, who is currently in Iran, faces three ongoing legal proceedings.
The ruling follows a December 2025 conviction for 'propaganda activities against the regime', which carried a one-year prison sentence and a two-year travel ban and was upheld on appeal. Panahi returned to Iran at the end of March after the ceremony for the 98th Academy Awards, where 'It Was Just an Accident' was nominated for Best International Feature. He previously spent 86 days in Tehran's Evin prison in 2022 and 2023, an experience that inspired the film's story of former prisoners confronting a man they believe was their torturer.
