Last week, Panahi stepped back into the spotlight — not through smuggled footage or video calls, but in person. For the first time in over two decades, the now 64-year-old filmmaker returned to the Cannes Film Festival to present his latest feature, It Was Just an Accident, premiering in competition to an emotional 8-minute standing ovation.

Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s revenge thriller “It Was Just an Accident” has won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday.

The film, “Un Simple Accident,” was directed by Jafar Panahi, a longtime festival favorite. The award capped a contest that was widely seen as the strongest in years.

The Golden Bear and Golden Lion winner arrives on the Croisette with his latest feature, which is also his first movie not to have been shot illegally since 2006.

Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustaee said on Friday that he was careful in how he shot his Cannes Film Festival entry "Woman and Child", which never shows women without the mandatory hijab, but was still unsure how he would be received when he returned home.

Can Neon extend one of the most unprecedented streaks in movies? That’s one of the big questions heading into the presentation of the Palme d’Or on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival. The past five winners in Cannes have all been released by the indie distributor,

The dissident Iranian director, no longer under a travel ban from Tehran, returned to Cannes for the first time in two decades to present the competition film 'It Was Just An Accident.'