Cannes winner Panahi, sentenced to over five years in prison, seen at Tehran funeral after months out of sight

Award-winning Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was seen in public in Tehran on November 3, 2026 for the first time since returning home. — AFP pic

First Published: Wednesday, 04 Nov 2026 11:38 AM MYT

PARIS, Nov 4 — Iranian award-winning film director Jafar Panahi on Tuesday made his first public appearance since returning to Iran earlier this year, at the funeral of a veteran football star, video reports showed.

Panahi, who won the top prize at the 2025 Cannes film festival, returned to Iran in March shortly after attending the 2026 Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles, despite facing legal cases and bitterly criticising the crackdown on protests in January.

An Iranian court has now sentenced Panahi to over five years in prison, his lawyer said last week, although the latest charges are unclear. In June, an Iranian court rejected an appeal against a one-year jail sentence.

He had not been seen since arriving in Iran but was also believed to still remain at liberty despite the announcement of prison sentences against him.

But Panahi was clearly present at the funeral in Tehran of the former national team footballer Hamid Alidoosti, images published by Iran’s ISNA news agency as well as Persian-language media based outside Iran showed.

Wearing his trademark dark glasses, he embraced and sat next to Peyman Maadi, one of Iran’s most prominent actors.

The late football player’s daughter Taraneh Alidoosti – one of the country’s most acclaimed actors – was present at the funeral, not wearing the Islamic headscarf as is still demanded by the law in the Islamic republic.

Images posted by media based outside Iran showed her seated next to a man – the former Iranian international striker Ali Daei – at the funeral and then carrying her father’s coffin with other men.

Taraneh Alidoosti had strongly supported 2022 nationwide protests against the authorities and at the time posted a picture on social media defiantly showing herself without a headscarf.

Hailed as a hero by supporters of the movement, she was held for almost three weeks in prison and said she was putting her acting career on hold to support families of those killed in the crackdown on protests. — AFP