After the triumphant Cannes, the great Iranian director Jafar Panahi to receive the honorary Cinehill Maverick Award in Fužine. • Affordable tickets pre-sale starting soon!

Celebrated director, screenwriter, producer, and sometimes actor Jafar Panahi will be the guest of honour at this year’s Cinehill, making it his first in-person visit to the festival with which he has been associated since the time he was banned from traveling.

Eleven years since he participated in the Motovun Film Festival from detention, as the president of the then “Jury in Exile”, one of the greatest living Iranian directors returns to Cinehill – this time with a bang. And with him is his latest feature, It Was Just an Accident, on the tail of winning the Palme d’Or.

Jafar Panahi is the only working director to have won the main awards at all of the world’s most prestigious festivals. From the Golden Leopard in Locarno for The Mirror, to the Golden Lion in Venice for No Bears, to the Golden Bear at the Berlinale for Taxi, all the way to the Palme d’Or for It Was Just an Accident – ​​Panahi is known for films bordering between reality and fiction, socially critical as much as self-reflexive, with which he redefined the very framework of cinematic expression.

Social repression and injustice, the inequality of women, as well as a deep humanism and humourous perspective are frequent features of Panahi’s films, which is why he has often been exposed to political censorship, arrested and sanctioned by the Iranian authorities. Despite this, he never stopped filming, often using hidden cameras, in order to depict Iranian everyday life as deeply and as realistically as possible.

This year, Cinehill finally has the pleasure of hosting this legendary filmmaker in person, and on the occasion will present him with the honorary Maverick Award, awarded since 2008 to filmmakers who go against the grain, and whose work demonstrates cinematic courage and an ethical stance towards the world, expanding the boundaries of film expression.

“The aim of our Maverick Award is to honour filmmakers who have fought for their art without reservation”, explains Cinehill director Igor Mirković. “We would be hard pressed to find a filmmaker who has fought longer and more persistently, making films despite all the bans and obstacles.”

But the value of Panahi’s work goes far beyond his social engagement, highlights Mirković. “We are not only honouring Panahi as a dissident, but as a magnificent filmmaker, certainly one of the greatest to ever stand before our audience in person. When we saw his confirmation email in our inbox, it was one of the most exciting moments of our festival career.” Of course, with the exception of that distant 2014, when we organised the Jury in Exile.

Back then Panahi was under house arrest, convicted of “propaganda against the system”. Despite a 20-year-long ban on travel, filmmaking, and communication with the media, this uncompromising artist managed to continue making films that, thanks to the joint efforts of the international film community, found their way to global audiences and the screens (and awards) of the world’s major festivals. Some of the methods allegedly involved smuggling the films on a USB stick hidden inside a cake. Prompted by social turmoil, the rise of the radical right and attempts to curb individual freedoms and freedom of expression, Cinehill also lent a hand by forming a special jury, consisting of people who had been sanctioned by the state or forced to leave their native countries owing to their actions.

It was a year of creative solutions – Panahi’s participation on the jury presented the festival organisers with an entirely new puzzle: how to deliver the films from the main program to a director under house arrest? The paths of social resistance are labyrinthine, as it turns out – even in the age of the widely available internet. The films thus first traveled to intermediaries in France, from where they found their way to the famous director. “Technology was available but it was not nearly as fast and smooth as we are used to today, so we sent the films to Tehran on DVDs via couriers”, recalls Igor Mirković.

In 2022, Panahi once again ended up in prison owing to political protests, while the Motovun Film Festival sent a message of support to the arrested artists and inaugurated the festival with his feature Hit the Road. It was the second time that the ties between the festival and the celebrated filmmaker intertwined ‘long-distance’.

On this occasion, the Cinehill audience will also get to see his latest title, It Was Just an Accident, which won the main festival prize at Cannes this year. It is Panahi’s first film since 2006 to be filmed legally, after the former 20-year-long ban was lifted – but it still boasts the same razor-sharp critical edge. This complex drama with elements of thriller marks the director’s return to the “pure” fiction form, emblematic of his early works such as The White Balloon.

In addition to the screening of It Was Just an Accident, the festival will also present a small retrospective of Panahi’s works, selected by the director himself in collaboration with the festival.

To secure your spot at these screenings, we recommend that you snatch up your ticket bundles Big Hill and Little Hill now, which go on sale at more affordable prices starting 7 June. The bundles are on pre-sale online, only until 7 July, when individual tickets hit the festival box office.

The festival is supported by the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, the Kvarner and Gorski Kotar Tourist Boards, and co-organised with the municipality of Fužine.