Jafar Panahi, in official selection at Cannes 2025: "I don't have the capacity to live anywhere other than Iran"

Emotions ran high on Tuesday, May 20, between the audience and the director, during the official presentation of Jafar Panahi's new film, A Simple Accident , in Cannes, after so many years of seclusion and mortification in his country. The Iranian presence at the Festival – since the death in 2016 of that untouchable genius, Abbas Kiarostami – has become a tangential, fragile thing, subject to danger and caution. The hardening of the regime has transformed the arrival of his heirs – severely monitored, even regularly jailed – into so many gambles of deception.

The very existence of films – under the conditions imposed on their creators – is itself a miracle. We remember last year's visit by Mohammad Rasoulof, who – at the same time as he presented the very beautiful The Flower of the Wild Fig Tree – announced his decision to remain in exile. This year, it is the turn of that great artist, Panahi, whom we thought we would never see again outside his borders, so much has the wrath of oppression fallen upon him in recent years.

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