One of Iran's best-known film-makers. He has been locked up twice by the Islamic Republic, both times at Evin prison in Tehran. During interrogation at Evin, prisoners are blindfolded and placed on a chair facing a wall; interrogators sit behind them and the prisoners answer questions on paper, lifting the blindfold to write. Mr Panahi endured a spell in solitary confinement and went on a hunger strike.
After being banned from travelling abroad and making movies, Mr Panahi shot a film in his flat and called it "This Is Not A Film". He then drove a taxi around Tehran—driving being his only other skill, he jokes—recording the passengers inside. The result was the inimitable "Taxi Tehran".
His film "It Was Just An Accident", drawing on his own and other inmates' experiences of imprisonment, was nominated for two Oscars in 2026. The screenplay was co-written with Mehdi Mahmoudian, who was briefly imprisoned for his involvement. In the film, a labourer suspects the driver of a broken-down car is the man who tortured him in prison; the characters try to identify the torturer by the squeak of his artificial leg, the tang of his sweat and the contours of his skin—traces of the gruesome, sightless intimacy between torturer and victim.
Mr Panahi was sentenced to a year in prison in his absence abroad. He wears signature dark glasses.
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.