After the Palme d'Or was awarded, Iran denounced France's "insulting" remarks and summoned the chargé d'affaires

Iran has summoned the French chargé d'affaires in Tehran to protest "insulting" comments from Paris after dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi was honored at the Cannes Film Festival , state media reported Sunday. The 64-year-old director received the Palme d'Or this Saturday for his film A Simple Accident , a political rant in which former prisoners are tempted to take revenge on their torturer. In defiance of the laws of the Islamic Republic, several of his actresses appear without headscarves.

Reacting to the director's award at Cannes, the head of French diplomacy, Jean-Noël Barrot , criticized the Islamic Republic in a short message published on X. "In a gesture of resistance against the oppression of the Iranian regime, Jafar Panahi wins a Palme d'Or which revives hope for all freedom fighters, everywhere in the world," he wrote, provoking the ire of the authorities in Iran.

"Following the insulting remarks and unfounded allegations made by the French Foreign Minister against Iran, the chargé d'affaires in Tehran was summoned to the ministry," the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday. Iran condemns "the French government's misuse" of the Cannes Film Festival "to advance its political agenda against the Islamic Republic," IRNA said.

On Sunday, no official commented on the second time an Iranian has been honored at Cannes, after Abbas Kiarostami for The Taste of Cherry in 1997. A critic of the government, Jafar Panahi has been imprisoned twice in Iran: for 86 days in 2010 and for nearly seven months between 2022 and 2023.

The reformist dailies Etemad, Shargh, and Ham Mihan reported Jafar Panahi's victory factually online, without comment, while most media outlets ignored the story. State television, for example, ignored the Palme d'Or, focusing on the Resistance Film Festival, an official event that honors pro-Palestinian works or those about the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).

A major name in Iranian cinema, Jafar Panahi has seen his work regularly win awards at major festivals, from Cannes to Venice to Berlin. The director is due to return to Iran on Sunday, a return he told AFP that does not "fear" him at all . "Travelers are going home," he wrote on Instagram on Sunday, alongside a photo of himself and the film crew.