Historical golden palm for Jafar Panahi: prohibited from Iran's exit for 14 years, the sacred filmmaker in Cannes 2025

The 78th Cannes Film Festival ends this Saturday, May 24, 2025 with the closing ceremony, during which the jury chaired by Juliette Binoche revealed her record. The Palme d'Or was attributed to “a simple accident” by Jafar Panahi.

End clap for the 78th Cannes Film Festival. After a fortnight on the Croisette filled with discoveries, emotions, cinema, climbing of steps, stars and opening on the artistic world, the jury chaired by Juliette Binoche chose her golden palm 2025.

Presented by Laurent Lafitte, the closing ceremony was the scene of engaged speech, calls for gathering, to the difference, to living together, to the power of speech and at the risks that cinema takes, but also of an interpretation of “La Vie en Rose” by Edith Piaf by John C. Reilly.

So what film succeeds Anora de Sean Baker? This is a simple Jafar Panahi accident. The Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi This is one of those filmmakers accustomed and celebrated at the Cannes Film Festival. 30 years ago, he received the Golden Camera for his very first film, the white ball.

Seven years after winning the prize for the script for three faces, the director therefore returned with a simple accident, an intense and overwhelming drama which recounts the political revolt through a banal event. His characters see their destiny changing after an accident on the road.

A historic gold palm for Jafar Panahi

Juliette Binoche's jury rewards a filmmaker in danger, who fights through his cinema and which is part of the movement of the new Iranian wave. As a reminder, Jafar Panahi was prohibited from exit from territory for 14 years and was sentenced in 2010 by Iranian justice to 6 years in prison for propaganda against the regime.

Then placed in parole, the director was arrested at the age of 62 in 2022. He will not be released until 7 months later after a hunger and thirst strike. It is his new film and her fight that Juliette Binoche and her jury chose to reward for this 78th Cannes Festival, making Jafar Panahi the first filmmaker to have had the Golden Camera and the Palme d'Or.

In addition, Jafar Panahi is the third filmmaker to accumulate the golden lion triple for the circle (2000), gold bear for Taxi Tehran (2015) and Palme d'Or for a simple accident (2025), after Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Altman.

“We are here, with all those who suffer, not by political opinion, but by the heart, by compassion, tenderness, by shared humanity, for freedom, is found”said Juliette Binoche.

“Art provokes, questions, upsets. He disarves the old and surprises an unsuspected dimension in us. Art mobilizes the creative energy from the most precious, the most lively in us. A force that makes it possible to transform darkness into forgiveness, in hope, in new life. This is why we have chosen, for the palm of gold, a simple accident of Jafar Panahi”.