An Iranian director who was arrested last summer, weeks before his latest film was released to widespread acclaim, has gone on hunger strike to protest his continued detention amid more than four months of anti-government protests.
Jafar Panahi, whose films have thrilled critics and won numerous international prizes, issued a statement saying he would refuse food or medicine starting Wednesday "in protest against the extra-legal and inhumane behavior of the judicial and security apparatus."
Panahi, 62, was sentenced to six years in prison in 2011 on charges of producing anti-government propaganda, but the sentence was never carried out. Banned from both travel and filmmaking, he continued to make underground films that were released abroad to great acclaim. His latest film, "No Bears," in which he plays a fictionalized version of himself while making a film along the Iran-Turkey border, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, a week before the protests began. The New York Times and The Associated Press named it one of the top 10 films of the year, and film critic Justin Chang of The Los Angeles Times called it 2022's best movie.
On Wednesday, around 100 people took part in a protest in the western Iranian city of Abdanan, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported. It said five "rioters" suffered minor injuries when security forces intervened and that 10 people were arrested, without providing further details.
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