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Jafar Panahi Invited To Join Berlinale Jury

Finally, some relatively good news on the Jafar Panahi front.

Despite still being involved with a long talked about and highly controversial court case resulting from his imprisonment in late March 2010, IndieWire is reporting that Panahi has been invited to join the International Jury of the 61st Berlin International Film Festival.

‘We hope Jafar Panahi will be able to attend the Festival and perform this important task on the International Jury of the 61st Berlinale,’ said Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick.

This is the second time the Iranian auteur had been invited to join a film festival jury, after being invited earlier this year to join the Cannes Film Festival jury.

Personally, while I’m not as familiar with Panahi’s canon as I’d like to be, I do definitely love the fact that it seems like those within the film world have truly stood behind this filmmaker as well as they humanly could.

Source: IndieWire

Joshua Brunsting

Josh is a critic, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, a wrestling nerd, a hip-hop head, a father, a cinephile and a man looking to make his stamp on the world, one word at a time.