Award-winning Iranian film director Jafar Panahi has left the country for the first time in 14 years after completing a prison sentence for his activism that allowed for a lifting of a travel ban imposed on him by the country's authorities.
Tahereh Saeedi said on Instagram on April 25 that she and her husband were going to travel abroad "for a few days." The couple later left on a trip to France where their daughter lives.
Panahi, 62, was arrested in July as the authorities cracked down on dissent in response to growing antiestablishment sentiment and near-daily protests over living conditions and graft across the Islamic republic.
He was temporarily released from prison in February after going on a hunger strike to protest "the illegal and inhumane behavior" of Iran's judiciary.
"After having fully served his sentence, Panahi was authorized to leave the country and obtained his passport," his lawyer told AFP.
Just days prior to his arrest, Panahi had joined a group of more than 300 Iranian filmmakers in publishing an open letter calling on the security forces to "lay down their arms" in the face of public outrage over "corruption, theft, inefficiency, and repression" following the violent crackdown against those protesting a building collapse in May in the southwestern city of Abadan, which killed 41 people.
Those protests were overtaken by a wave of unrest following the September 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody for allegedly violating the country's head-scarf law.
Since then, several Iranian filmmakers and prominent public figures have been summoned or arrested by the authorities, including the popular actress Katayoun Riahi.
Outrage over the hijab law has prompted several high-profile actresses to take pictures without a head scarf in support of the protesters, whose demonstrations pose one of the biggest threats to the Islamic leadership since the revolution in 1979.
Panahi was awarded the Special Jury prize at the Venice International Film Festival in September for his latest film, No Bears, which was released while he was in prison.
The filmmaker has won a number of international awards for films critiquing modern Iran, including the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival for Taxi in 2015 and best screenplay at Cannes for his film Three Faces in 2018.
Since Amini's death, more than 500 people have been killed in the police crackdown, according to rights groups. Several thousand more have been arrested, including many protesters, as well as journalists, lawyers, activists, digital rights defenders, and others.
