Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi swept the 35th annual Gotham Awards in New York on Monday night, just hours after Tehran’s government sentenced him in absentia to a year in prison and a two-year travel ban for engaging in “propaganda activities” against the state. Panahi, 65, scooped three awards for best director, best original screenplay, and best international feature for his latest film, It Was Just an Accident, which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and is expected to receive an Oscar nomination. “This award belongs to all people who worked for me on this film,” Panahi said as he collected the award. “I’d like to dedicate this award to independent filmmakers around the world… I hope that this dedication will be considered a small tribute to all filmmakers who have been deprived of the right to see and to be seen but continue to create and to exist.” Panahi, who is currently outside Iran, has long been a target of the Iranian government. In 2010, he was sentenced to six years in prison and a 20-year ban on making films after being convicted of making “propaganda against the system,” but was released on bail after serving just two months of his sentence. His 2011 documentary, This Is Not a Film, was smuggled into the Cannes festival on a flash drive hidden inside a cake, and It Was Just an Accident has been selected as France’s official nomination for the 2026 Academy Awards.
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