Mehdi Mahmoudian, who is nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, was just released from Nowshahr Prison in northern Iran, according to reports cited in Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter.
The screenwriter was imprisoned there for 17 days after signing a letter known as “The Statement of the Seventeen” in January. The letter condemned Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, over the killings of thousands of demonstrators in protests around the country.
Reportedly, Mahmoudian was released along with the journalist and activist Vida Rabbani and student leader Abdollah Momeni. Each was required to pay 6.5 billion tomans (around $10,000) to the Revolutionary Court as bail money.
“The Statement of the Seventeen” letter called for the formation of a “broad national front to organize a referendum and establish a constituent assembly, enabling all Iranians of all political beliefs to participate in a democratic and transparent process to determine their political future.”
The letter was also signed by Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, the director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
“Mehdi Mahmoudian, Vida Rabbani, and Abdollah Momeni peacefully exercised their right to express their views, but the regime responded by accusing them of ‘insulting the Supreme Leader’ and ‘propaganda against the Islamic Republic,’” Panahi said in a statement released by Neon, the distributor of It Was Just an Accident, on Tuesday.
“For years, such charges have been used as tools to criminalize thought, silence criticism, and instill fear in society. Turning a civil and peaceful act into a national security case is a clear sign of intolerance toward the independent voices of citizens,” Panahi’s statement continued.
Mahmoudian was already imprisoned
Mahmoudian, who is also a political journalist and human-rights activist, was imprisoned for a five-year term from 2009-2014 after he was charged with “mutiny against the regime” for publicizing the abuse of detainees at the Kahrizak Detention Center.
He co-wrote It Was Just an Accident with Panahi, Nader Saeiver, and Shadhmer Rastin. The movie, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025, is nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature, as well as for Best Original Screenplay. The film combines black comedy with political commentary as it tells the story of an Iranian who, after he is released from prison, thinks he has glimpsed his sadistic jailer, and brings over some of his fellow former prisoners to confirm his identity.
While some Iranian filmmakers, such as Asghar Farhadi, two of whose films have won Oscars, have managed to make movies in Iran without incurring the wrath of the Islamic Republic, many others have been imprisoned.
Panahi was arrested in 2022 and spent seven months in prison when he went there to ask what had happened to Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, also a movie director, who had been arrested. Panahi was released in 2023 after he went on a hunger strike. He was in the US promoting It Was Just an Accident in December when he was sentenced in absentia to a year in prison and a two-year travel ban, and forbidden to take part in “propaganda activities against the system.”
The film was submitted to the Oscars by France, because it has French co-producers, rather than by Iran.
In May 2024, Rasoulof was sentenced by the Islamic Republic to whipping, eight years in prison, and a large fine after it was announced that The Seed of the Sacred Fig, an allegory and a psychological thriller critical of the regime, had been chosen for the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Rasoulof managed to flee to Germany and attend Cannes, where the film won five awards, including the Jury Special Prize, and it also received an Oscar nomination.
The leading actress in that film, Soheila Golestani, was not allowed to travel to the Oscars in 2025 and was sentenced to 74 lashes and a year in prison for appearing in a movie so critical of the government.
In the current round of protests, other filmmakers have been arrested and killed. Javad Ganji, 39, an assistant director, was shot to death by Iranian forces in Tehran on January 9. Government agents then put a banner used by the Basij volunteer paramilitary organization, which is affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, on Ganji’s home to brand him as a regime supporter, rather than a dissident.
Regarding this killing and the banner incident, Panahi wrote on Instagram, “The regime is attempting to erase its massacre of protesters by intimidating artists, fabricating loyalty narratives, and burying the truth under judicial repression.”
Davood Abbasi, a documentary filmmaker who was arrested in January and beaten, has been detained in Ghazalhesar Prison in Blatcliffe, according to a post on Panahi’s social media.