An Iranian filmmaker who was imprisoned by his own government only three years ago took home the top award on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival.
Jafar Panahi received the prestigious Palme d’Or for his revenge thriller “It was Just an Accident.”
The crowd rose with thunderous applause when Cate Blanchett presented the award to Mr. Panahi. He had staged a hunger strike after Iranian officials in Tehran banned him from leaving the country.
He told the cheering audience that his priority is advocating for the freedom of his countrymen.
“Let us join forces. No one should dare tell us what kind of clothes we should wear, what we should do or what we should not do,” Mr. Panahi said, according to the Associated Press. “The cinema is a society. Nobody is entitled to tell what we should do or refrain from doing.”
Mr. Panahi made “It Was Just an Accident” in secret without the permission of the government. It was reportedly partly inspired by his own experiences as a political prisoner. In the film, a released dissident plots revenge against a man he recognizes as one of his torturers, but later begins to question whether violence is the right answer to oppression.
“Before going to jail and before getting to know the people that I met there, and hearing their stories [and] their backgrounds, the issues I dealt with in my films were totally different,” Mr. Panahi told The Hollywood Reporter. “Spending time with these people in prison really changed something in my vision, as a director.”
The festival’s top prize was handed out the same day as a major power outage hit Cannes that French officials say was likely an act of intentional sabotage. On Sunday, southeastern France was hit again, with power going out in the city of Nice. Arson at electrical faclities was suspected in both cases.
Police currently have not established a link between the two blackouts.
The Nice outage started around 2 a.m. and left some 45,000 households without electricity. The city’s trams stopped and power was briefly cut to the Nice Côte d’Azur airport during its overnight closure hours.
Power was fully restored by 5:30 a.m., according to the energy provider company Enedis.
The Nice public prosecutor said a criminal investigation has been opened for “organized arson.”
On Saturday, two other installations in the Alpes Maritime department were damaged in what officials also suspected to be arson, temporarily cutting power to 160,000 homes, including events at the film festival.
Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi condemned Sunday’s attack and said the city had filed a complaint.
“I strongly denounce these malicious acts targeting our country,” he said on X. He ordered all sensitive electrical infrastructure in the city to be placed under police protection.
“These actions can have serious consequences, particularly on hospitals,” Estrosi said at a press briefing on Sunday. “As long as the perpetrators haven’t been caught, we will remain on high alert.”
This article is based in part on wire reports.
