Amnesty International, the human rights organization, is building a petition campaign to protest the sentence of Jafar Panahi, a leading Iranian filmmaker and human rights activist. Panahi, an internationally celebrated film director who won the coveted Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival for his 2000 film "Dayareh" (Circle), has been sentenced to six years in prison plus a twenty-year ban on all his artistic activities—including film making, writing scripts, traveling abroad and speaking with media. He was specifically accused of making an anti-government film without permission and inciting opposition protests after the disputed 2009 presidential election. Mr. Panahi's artistic collaborator, Mohammad Rasoulof, was also sentenced to six years in prison.

Join such celebrated film luminaries as Paul Haggis, Martin Scorsese, Nazanin Boniadi, Sean Penn, Harvey Weinstein, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Googoosh, Roxana Saberi, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Rudi Bakhtiar, Hadi Ghaemi, Lina Wertmuller, Hamid Dabashi, Peter Billingsley, Sir Patrick Stewart, Josh Brolin, Gale Anne Hurd, Hans Zimmer, Susan Sarandon, Michael Apted, Gabriel Byrne, Elliott Gould, Harvey Keitel, Deepa Mehta, Edward Zwick, Azar Nafisi, Ridley Scott, Phillip Noyce, Ron Howard, Mia Farrow and Nancy Meyers and sign on to the online protest letter campaign at the  Amnesty International website:  http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/c.jhKPIXPCIoE/b.6466387/k.AA1D/Iran_must_reverse_harsh_sentence_imposed_on_distinguished_film_director/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?ICID=I1101A01&tr=y&auid=7663207

Sandy Mandelberger, Festival Circuit Editor