Iranian film director Jafar Panahi has travel ban lifted

3 May 2023

Here’s a coincidence, just days after I saw Taxi, also known as Tehran Taxi, a film made in 2015 by Jafar Panahi, news comes through that a travel ban placed on the Iranian filmmaker fourteen years ago has been lifted.

His travel ban was first imposed in 2009, after his attendance at the funeral of a student killed in the Green Revolution. Panahi then attempted to shoot a film using the uprising as a backdrop. The following year, he was given a six-year suspended prison sentence and 20 year ban on travel and film-making for “making propaganda against the system”.

It is said Panahi — who has frequently clashed with the Iranian government — has since left the country, and is in France, where it has been speculated he will be attending this year’s Cannes Film Festival as a juror.