02/02/2026, 11:0502/02/2026, 11:05
A co-author of the Oscar-nominated political thriller “A Simple Accident” has been arrested in Iran. As the Iranian online portal Emtedad reported, Mehdi Mahmoudian was now able to contact his family after his imprisonment.
The allegations against him are currently unknown, according to his lawyer. A possible reason for the arrest is a letter that Mahmoudian signed together with other personalities and in which the bloody repression in Iran was condemned at the beginning of January.
A dramatic economic crisis and very high inflation triggered protests in Iran at the end of December. There were mass protests in the major cities on January 8th and 9th, which were brutally suppressed. Thousands of people are said to have been killed.
The Iranian director of the film “A Simple Accident”, Jafar Panahi (65), also made a dramatic appeal to the situation in his home country at the start of the European Film Awards in Berlin in mid-January. “If violence goes unanswered, it becomes normalized,” said Panahi, among other things. And when it becomes normalized, it spreads and becomes contagious.
Panahi won the Palme d’Or in Cannes with his latest film “A Simple Accident” and is now in the running for Best International Film for France at the Oscars. In it he deals with his experiences in prison and the violence of the Iranian regime. While the director was abroad, a revolutionary court in Tehran imposed a prison sentence on him in absentia. (dab/sda/dpa)