Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi, born on 11 July 1960, is commonly associated with the Iranian New Wave film movement. After years of making short films and assisting fellow filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi achieved international recognition with his feature film debut, The White Balloon (1995), which bagged the Caméra d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, marking the first time an Iranian film won a major award at Cannes. Panahi's films are known for their humanistic perspective on life in Iran, with a consistent focus on the tribulations of children, the underprivileged, and women. Despite experiencing multiple detentions by the Iranian government and enduring a 20-year ban on directing any movies, Panahi made a documentary feature, This Is Not a Film (2011), while awaiting the result of an appeal and continued to produce critically acclaimed work. His film Taxi (2015) won the Golden Bear at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival. Panahi's films capture universal concepts of humanitarianism in a realistic, yet unsentimental, lens, forging a significant aesthetic in Iranian cinema.