Jafar Panahi Starts Hunger Strike Until ‘Perhaps My Lifeless Body Is Freed from Prison’

Iranian “No Bears” filmmaker Jafar Panahi has announced a hunger strike to protest his continued incarceration in Iran’s Evin prison, even after the country’s courts voided his sentence last week.In July of last year, Panahi went to the Evin prison to inquire about the arrests of fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, who were detained for their social media protest over the government response to a building collapse that killed more than 40 people.Panahi’s inquiry reactivated a six-year sentence the director was originally handed in 2010 along with a 20-year-long filmmaking and travel ban, and he’s remained in incarceration since his inquiries.The reactivated sentencing originated from Panahi’s attendance of a 2009 funeral for a student killed in the Green movement, where Iranian citizens demanded the removal of then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.The award-winning director’s films have regularly challenged Iranian systems and traditions, and his most recent film “No Bears,

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