Mehdi Mahmoudian released 17 days after arrest for signing a statement condemning Iran’s supreme leader and regime’s protest crackdown

Mehdi Mahmoudian, the Oscar-nominated cowriter of It Was Just an Accident, has been released from an Iranian prison 17 days after his arrest, according to local media reports.

Mahmoudian was arrested in Tehran shortly after signing a statement condemning Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the regime’s violent crackdown on demonstrators. On Tuesday, he was released from the Nowshahr prison, along with two other signatories of the statement, Vida Rabbani and Abdollah Momeni.

The award-winning director who was released from prison in February is rumoured to be a juror at the Cannes film festival

Jafar Panahi, the acclaimed Iranian director whose life has been dominated by clashes with his country’s government, has left Iran for the first time in 14 years.

Panahi’s wife, Tahereh Saeedi, posted a picture on Instagram on Tuesday night showing her arriving with her husband at an undisclosed airport.

Award-winning director, who was arrested in July, is released from Evin prison in Tehran

The acclaimed Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has been released on bail after starting a hunger strike to protest against his almost seven-month detention, a rights group and supporters said on Friday.

Panahi has been released from Evin prison in Tehran “two days after starting his hunger strike for freedom”, the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said on Twitter. Iran’s Shargh newspaper posted an image of Panahi jubilantly embracing a supporter.

Lawyer for award-winning director says court of appeal expected to decide on case by end of week

Iran’s judiciary is to rule on whether to release the film-maker Jafar Panahi on bail after his conviction was overturned by the supreme court, his lawyer said.

Panahi, 62, who has won a number of awards at European film festivals, was arrested on 11 July last year and sent to jail to serve a six-year sentence which had been handed down in 2010 for “propaganda against the system”. He served two months at the time before being granted a conditional release. He was also barred from leaving Iran and making films, and was largely confined to his home until his arrest in July.

The Iranian director was arrested last week for criticising the government after enquiring about the earlier arrest of fellow film-maker Mohammad Rasoulof

The director Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to six years’ imprisonment by the Iranian judiciary, who are seeking to enforce a previously handed-down sentence.

Panahi, who has won the top prizes at the Venice and Berlin film festivals, and is the director of films including The Circle, The White Balloon, Crimson Gold, Taxi and This Is Not a Film, is one of three film-makers arrested in Tehran in less than a week.

Berlin winner in 2015 detained while querying arrest of another director after protests over building collapse

The award-winning director Jafar Panahi has become the third Iranian film-maker to be arrested in less than a week, the Mehr news agency has said, as he visited prosecutors over the detentions last week of Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad.

Panahi, 62, has won a slew of awards at international festivals for films that have critiqued modern Iran, including the top prize in Berlin for Taxi in 2015, and best screenplay at Cannes for 3 Faces in 2018.