Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi and Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov – who both have films competing for the Palme d’Or – have been prevented from leaving their respective countries

Two dissident directors competing for the coveted Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival will be unable to attend the event, due to restrictions imposed by Russia and Iran.

Russian theatre and film director Kirill Serebrennikov and Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi are unable to leave their respective countries as a result of criminal charges that critics allege are politically influenced.

Cannes has pushed for both directors to be allowed to travel to the festival, even going so far as asking for help from the French government in getting Panahi to attend, but to no avail.

Serebrennikov, whose film Leto (or Summer) appears in competition at the festival, has been under house arrest in Russia since August on charges of corruption. A former artistic director of avant-garde Moscow theatre the Gogol Center, he is accused of defrauding the state of 68 million rubles (£790,000) under the guise of funding for a non-profit stage project, Platforma.



The director has received support from many leading Russian actors and directors, who say the charges are aimed at discouraging dissent among Russia’s artistic community. The European Film Academy has also criticised the decision and has called for the Russian authorities to have Serebrennikov “released immediately and unconditionally and to guarantee his free movement and artistic expression”.

Serebrennikov has been critical of the Kremlin in the past, denouncing Russia’s annexation of Crimea and voicing support for the country’s threatened LGBT community.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov at the Cannes film festival in 2016. Photograph: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images

Speaking at a court hearing last month, the director denied the charges and pointed to ticket sales and critical praise domestically and abroad as evidence of Platforma’s success. Despite this, his house arrest was extended to 19 July.

Leto, which was filmed before Serebrennikov’s arrest, tells the story of the underground rock scene which, influenced by western stars such as Led Zeppelin and David Bowie, blossomed in the Soviet Union in the early 80s. It is the director’s second film to screen at the festival, after 2016’s The Student.

Panahi, a prize winner at Cannes for his 1995 debut The White Balloon, has been barred from leaving Iran since 2010 after being found guilty of “colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic”.

Sentenced to six years in prison, the director was initially placed under house arrest. Though the terms of his sentence have since been loosened to allow him to move freely within Iran, Panahi remains subject to a 20-year ban on travelling abroad, speaking to the media and writing or directing any films.

The film-making ban on Panahi has done little to halt his output, however. Three Faces, which premieres in competition at Cannes later this week, is the director’s fourth film in seven years, with Panahi using ingenious means to make and distribute his work. Both This Is Not a Film, a 2011 documentary about his house arrest, and 2013 drama Closed Curtain were shot secretly in his home, with the former smuggled to Cannes on a USB flash drive hidden inside a cake. For his 2015 docufiction effort Taxi Tehran, meanwhile, the director carried out a covert shoot in a taxi cab, rigging it with hidden cameras and pretending to be its driver.

Three Faces tells the story of three actors at different stages of their career in post-revolution Iran, and continues a preoccupation in Panahi’s work with the restrictions placed on women in Iranian society. One of his previous films, the 2006 comedy Offside, features a group of girls attempting to enter a stadium to watch a world cup qualifying match. Women in Iran are still largely banned from entering stadiums alongside male fans to watch matches.

Writing on Instagram last month, Panahi expressed his continued hope that, despite the ban, his films would be screened abroad. “My biggest wish as a film-maker is for my films to be shown outside Iran, even in one cinema, in the farthest of places.”

He added that the fact that this year’s official selection contains two films by Iranian directors – the other being Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows – was proof that Iranian cinema remained “alive and dynamic”, despite restrictions imposed by the state.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lars von Trier at the Cannes film festival in 2011. Photograph: Joel Ryan/AP

One director who will be able to attend this year’s festival is Lars von Trier. The much-criticised Danish film-maker had been declared persona non grata by Cannes for comments made at the 2011 festival where he declared himself a Nazi and expressed sympathy for Adolf Hitler. However, the festival board lifted Von Trier’s ban last month, allowing the director’s latest effort The House That Jack Built to be screened out of competition. The film, which stars Matt Dillon and Uma Thurman, follows a spree of murders committed by a serial killer over a 12-year period and has been described by Von Trier as a celebration of “the idea that life is evil and soulless”.

This year’s Cannes film festival begins on 8 May and runs until 19 May.

