Jafar Panahi interviewed by Johnathan Romney | BFI London Film Festival 2025 Screen Talk

Jafar Panahi, the winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, talks to Johnathan Romney about a career that has seen him directly take on a government intent on silencing him through his art.

One of world cinema’s most important filmmakers, Jafar Panahi has produced a body of work that has critiqued Iranian society and which has had a real-world impact on his life. His films present cinema at its most humane and empathetic, although never without some degree of satirical bite.

From his emergence in the 1990s with The White Balloon, The Mirror and The Circle, Panahi also revealed his dexterity with the riveting crime drama Crimson Gold (written by Abbas Kiarostami) and wonderful Offside. Following his 2009 arrest in Iran, he ignored the order to stop making films and produced some of his most riveting work, including This Is Not a Film and Closed Curtain. Subsequent work, which includes Taxi Tehran, 3 Faces and No Bears, has seen him continue in his critique of the Iranian state. His latest film, It Was Just An Accident, screened at the 2025 BFI London Film Festival.

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