Banned Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi: 'The necessity to create becomes even more of an urge'

The director of the infamous This Is Not A Movie has filmed features while the Iranian authorities prohibit him from doing so – and has underlined the importance of free speech.

The film-maker Jafar Panahi, currently banned from making films in his native Iran, has issued a statement underlining the spiritual and political importance of free creativity.

He was convicted of spreading anti-government propaganda after the Iranian government took umbrage at the content of his films, and sentenced with a film-making ban, as well as a jail sentence which he has so far managed to avoid. Despite the threat of imprisonment being held over him, he has made three films since: This Is Not A Movie (smuggled to Cannes on a USB hidden in a cake), Closed Curtain, and Taxi, which will debut at the Berlin film festival this year.

Opening up about the ban, Panahi said in a statement:

'Nothing can prevent me from making films since when being pushed to the ultimate corners I connect with my inner-self and, in such private spaces, despite all limitations, the necessity to create becomes even more of an urge. Cinema as an art becomes my main preoccupation. That is the reason why I have to continue making films under any circumstances to pay my respect and feel alive.'

Panahi may no longer be under house arrest, as he documented in This Is Not A Movie, but he is not allowed to leave the country. He therefore won’t be in Berlin for the premiere of Taxi, in which a taxi driver played by Panahi has a series of encounters with passengers in his cab.