Around 40 members of the UK filmmaking community came together at the BFI Southbank yesterday (October 10) to stand in solidarity with jailed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, the women leading the protest movement in Iran and all those demonstrating for freedom in the country.
BFI London Film Festival director Tricia Tuttle led the event, which was attended by filmmakers and executives including: Picturehouse’s managing director Clare Binns; former Sundance director Tabitha Jackson; All The Beauty And The Bloodshed filmmaker Laura Poitras; Blue Jean director Georgia Oakley; No Kings director Roberto Minervini; Last Flight Home director Ondi Timoner; producer Madeleine Molyneaux; actors Aurélia Petit and Mariam Khundadze; writer Morgan M Page; actor-writer Taki Mumladze; and Jason Wood, executive director of public programmes and audiences at the BFI.
“We wanted to invite a moment for us all to come together, for a moment of solidarity,” said Tuttle. “When we invited Jafar Panahi’s No Bears to screen in the [LFF] festival, we said to Picturehouse who are releasing the film in the UK, that we wanted to have a moment for Jafar, Mohamad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad. What we didn’t know then is that whole world, and particularly the world of Iranians, would turn upside down in the last three weeks.
”I personally today want to stand in solidarity with the Iranian women who are laying their lives on the line and fighting for their freedom. We today stand in solidarity with other filmmakers the world, and I would like to name a couple of filmmakers who have been really important to the festival, who are in prison for standing up for freedom in their own countries. I’d mention Ma Aeint who made Money Has Four Legs which we screened in the festival last year, who was imprisoned in Myanmar this spring, also I would want to talk about Çiğdem Mater, who is in prison in Turkey as well.
”There are many countries represented here today. We all come from countries who are limiting freedom to protest, to stand in demonstration, it’s happening everywhere. In some places, people are putting their lives on the line for thinking in ways they are no allowed to think, or saying words they aren’t allowed to say.”
The event took place ahead of Panahi’s No Bears premiering at BFI London Film Festival. The film world premiered at Venice, where it won the special jury prize.
Suppression in Iran
Venice Golden Lion winner Panahi was ordered to serve a six-year prison sentence in July of this year. He was detained after inquiring about directors Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, who had been arrested earlier in July.
Panahi and Rasoulof had been arrested previously in 2010 for criticism of the government in their films and at protests. Panahi was sentenced to six years in jail in 2010, serving two months before being granted a conditional release. Panahi has since been banned from leaving Iran and making films and has largely been confined to his own home for the past 12 years.
Protests have erupted within Iran and around the world after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was killed in police custody on September 16, after being arrested for supposedly wearing her hijab too loosely.
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