Lawyer Mostafa Nili says the judgment also orders confiscation of all Panahi’s assets and two-year bans on foreign travel and social-media activity. Film journalist Mansour Jahani says Panahi remains in Iran and has not been imprisoned.
Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court in Iran has sentenced filmmaker Jafar Panahi to five years and one month in prison in absentia—without him present in court. Tehran-based independent film journalist Mansour Jahani told The Hollywood Reporter on October 27 that the court also ordered confiscation of all Panahi’s movable and immovable assets, a two-year foreign-travel ban and a two-year ban on social-media activity.
Jahani said Panahi was in Iran and had not been imprisoned under the new judgment. The offence underlying that judgment is unclear.
The judgment follows a December 2025 conviction in which Panahi received a one-year prison sentence for “propaganda activity against the system.” That earlier verdict was upheld on appeal. Panahi was abroad promoting It Was Just an Accident during the earlier proceedings; the film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and received an Oscar nomination for best international feature.
According to Jahani, Panahi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, said his client’s bank accounts were frozen the previous week. Panahi and his lawyer then visited the Enforcement of Judgments unit at the Culture and Media Prosecutor’s Office, where they learned that a new judgment had been issued without prior legal notice.
Panahi returned to Iran in March 2026. Nili said the case file nevertheless described him as being outside the country, IranWire reported.
Panahi, a longtime political activist, has previously served time in prison. He was arrested in July 2022 to serve an earlier six-year sentence and was released in February 2023 after seven months. That sentence also carried 20-year bans on filmmaking, screenwriting and foreign travel.
Branch 26 had also ordered a retrial after an earlier in-absentia sentence of one year in prison and a two-year filmmaking ban. How that retrial relates to the latest judgment remains unclear.
Nili said Panahi appeared before Branch 16 of the Investigation Office at the Culture and Media Prosecutor’s Office in September 2026 in another case, and that the director has three open legal cases. Whether the latest judgment can still be challenged, and when imprisonment, confiscation and the two-year bans would take effect, remain unclear.
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