TEHRAN — An Iranian court has sentenced award-winning film director Jafar Panahi to five years and one month in prison in a new ruling handed down in his absence, and ordered the seizure of all his assets, his lawyer Mostafa Nili said, in a case whose charges have not been made public.

Source: The Guardian

Reuters, citing Iran's semi-official Nournews, reported the sentence as five years in prison, with the seizure of Panahi's assets, a two-year ban on leaving the country and a two-year ban on social media activity. The ruling was reported by his lawyer to the Iranian news outlet Emtedad, and other reports citing the lawyer named Branch 26 of Tehran's Revolutionary Court.

Source: Reuters via WTBX

Nili said Panahi had not been told the date of the hearing in this latest case, and that he learned of the proceedings only after the director's bank accounts were frozen last week. Panahi currently faces three open legal cases, the lawyer said.

Panahi, 66, has not been detained. A friend of the film-maker, an activist based in Europe, told the Associated Press that he spoke with Panahi on Monday evening after the sentencing and that the director was not in custody. A sentence passed in absentia does not automatically mean an immediate arrest, and it is not yet clear whether the authorities will move to enforce this one.

A return home, then a new case

Panahi won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2025 for his film "It Was Just an Accident". He returned to Iran in March from an overseas trip promoting the film, even though he had been sentenced in his absence in 2025 to one year in prison for what the court called propaganda activities against the system, a sentence Reuters reported was upheld earlier this year.

The director has clashed with Iran's authorities for many years over his filmmaking and was arrested several times in the past. The new ruling adds to that long record at a time when Iran is already at the centre of a wider regional war and under intense international scrutiny.