Jafar Panahi, the renowned Iranian filmmaker, won the Golden Bear prize of the Berlinale Film Festival on 14 February 2015 for his film "Taxi" and his niece received it on his behalf. Panahi and the Human Rights Lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, were jointly awarded the Sakahrov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament in 2012.
Panahi was sentenced to six years of imprisonment for “assembly, colluding and propaganda against the state” in December 2010. In addition, he was banned from all professional, public and social activities for 20 years, including film making, writing film scripts, travelling abroad and giving any interviews to domestic and foreign media and has not been able to travel abroad since then.
Watch two short clips of "Taxi". Nasrin Sotoudeh appears in the first clip.