Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the 6001st episode of the Hollywood Reporter's

Awards Chatter podcast. I'm the host, Scott Feinberg, and my guest today is an Iranian

writer and director who has been a key figure in the Iranian new wave, and is one of

only four filmmakers, the others being Henri Georges-Clazot, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Robert Altman,

who was awarded the top prize at each of the three biggest European film festivals.

In his case, Venice's Golden Lion for his 2000 film The Circle, Berlin's Golden Bear for his 2015 film Taxi, and earlier this year, Cairns Palm Door, for it was just an accident, which was just chosen as the French submission for the Best International Feature Oscar Competition.

A man who has been persecuted by the Iranian regime, which has at times banned him

from making films and thrown him in jail, but who has nevertheless continued to make bold and

daring films about social issues in his homeland, leading the New York Times to describe him as

a humanist in a theocracy, the guardian to call him, the world's most

quietly defiant sinist, and the Los Angeles Times to describe him as not just one of Iran's

top filmmakers, but also its most politically outspoken. The great Jafar Panahi. Over the course

of a conversation at the offices of elevation pictures in Toronto,

during Panahi's visit to the Toronto International Film Festival, the 65-year-old and I,

assisted by his translator, Sheda Diani, discussed how he came to be mentored by and work

alongside the great Iranian filmmaker of an earlier generation, the late Abbas Kyrastami.

Why, starting with the circle, the Iranian regime began closely monitoring and not infrequently impeding his work?

What his outlook was after he was arrested in 2010 and sentenced to six years in jail,

banned from making films, banned from giving interviews,

and banned from leaving Iran for 20 years.

And why, even after being released but subject to being brought back to fulfill his sentence at any time,

he dared to keep making films, most notably 2011's This Is Not a Film?

...