by J. HOBERMAN
Ten months after his arrest last March, Jafar Panahi — the most internationally acclaimed of Iranian directors as well as one of the most political in both his movies and his outspoken support for opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi — has been sentenced to 6 years in prison. In addition, Panahi, 50, has been banned from making movies, talking to local or foreign journalists, and traveling abroad for 20 years. A second filmmaker, Mohammad Rasoulof, maker of the vivid allegory Iron Island (2005), was similarly sentenced. Their crime, according to his lawyer Farideh Gheyrat, was making “propaganda against the system.”
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