Jafar Panahi’s Cannes victory is a wonderful moment for an amazingly courageous film-maker
Panahi has endured years of harassment from the Iranian authorities but has created a tremendous body of work; his Palme d'Or is richly deserved
In the end, the Cannes Palme d'Or went to the most courageous film director in the world. It was a very satisfying grownup decision, favouring a remarkable and utterly individual film-maker: the director and democracy campaigner Jafar Panahi, an artist who unlike any other director in the Cannes competition really has suffered, taken real risks for cinema and spoken truth to power - and endured arrest and imprisonment for his pains.
He has created a rich canon of work which has told the world about Iranian society and the Iranian mind with a subtlety and depth that we are never going to get from the TV news.
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