(toskanews) – Alla Rome Film Festival it’s the day of Jafar Panahi: the great Iranian director presents to the public the his new film, A simple accidentwhich obtained the Palme d’Or this year in Cannes and that from November 6th it will be in Italian cinemas. The Festival awarded Panahi the Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be presented to him by Giuseppe Tornatore, while tomorrow the author of The white balloon, The circle, Bears don’t exist, Taxis Tehran will hold a Masterclass.
Rome Film Festival, Iranian director awarded
Panahi delivered A simple accident after being released from Evin prison, where he was imprisoned from July 2022 to February 2023. The film is a tribute to the many inmates who were victims of the repression of the Iranian regime. In his story, some people who have left prison, where they were victims of atrocious torture, come across, by chance, their former tormentor. Little by little we understand that, in some way, everyone is just a victim of the regime.
«The period I spent in prison influenced me greatly, I met people who have a pain in common and help each other to get through that period with less suffering. – explained the director – I make social films, but I don’t divide people into good and bad, as political films often do. For me here are human beings who are victims of a larger, defective and incompetent structure.”
When asked what has changed in his country today, after Israel’s attacks last June and the weakening of the regime, Panahi replied: «The Women, Life and Freedom movement has upset the history of the Islamic Republic, it has created a before and an after, there is the awareness of collective action. The fact remains that totalitarian regimes in moments of crisis have a pretext to repress, to guarantee their survival. The 12-day war gave the Islamic Republic this pretext: there was a nationwide truck drivers’ strike going on at the time, for example, and the strikes were stopped with the war. And unfortunately repression and death sentences have increased under the pretext of the war crisis.”
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