Iran film-maker Panahi must serve six-year sentence

TEHRAN: Award-winning dissident Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi, arrested last week in Tehran, must serve a six-year sentence previously handed to him in 2010, the judicial authority announced on Tuesday.

Panahi, 62, has won a number 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 atCannes for his film "Three Faces" in 2018.

He is the third director to be detained this month, alongside Mostafa Aleahmad and Mohammad Rasoulof, who won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2020 with his film "There Is No Evil". "Panahi had been sentenced in 2010 to a total of six years in prison" and was taken "to Evin detention centre to serve his sentence there", judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi told reporters.