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Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been released from Tehran’s Evin prison, his wife Tahereh Saeidi has announced in an Instagram post.
Panani was released after going on a hunger strike to protest still being incarcerated after Iran’s supreme court had overturned a six-year sentence issued against the director in 2010 for “propaganda against the system.” That sentence had become obsolete due to the country’s 10-year statute of limitations. But the directors’ wife and lawyers said that Iranian security services were forcing the judiciary to keep him behind bars.
Panahi, 62, is known globally for prizewinning works such as “The Circle,” “Offside,” “This is Not a Film,” “Taxi,” and most recently “No Bears,” winner of last year’s Venice’s Special Jury Prize. He was arrested last July in Tehran in the wake of the country’s conservative government crackdown. Panahi had been there to visit Tehran’s prosecutor’s office to follow up on the situation of fellow dissident filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulov, who had been incarcerated a few days earlier after signing an appeal against police violence.
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Panahi’s imprisonment took place in July before the wave of protests sparked in September by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while she was held in custody for allegedly wearing a loose hijab. Those protests have caused more than 500 civilians to be killed by government security forces and more than 100 members of the Iranian film industry to be arrested or banned from making movies.
On Jan. 4, Iranian authorities released Taraneh Alidoosti, the star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning film “The Salesman,” almost three weeks after she was jailed for criticizing a crackdown on the anti-government protests.
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