'Defenceless' Iranians need global support: filmmaker Panahi

Video grab taken on January 13, 2026 from UGC images posted on social media on January 10, 2026 shows clashes in Mashhad, in northeastern Iran. [AFP]

The crackdown in Iran is targeting "defenceless" people who need the support of the international community to "put an end" to the current system, award-winning Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi said on Tuesday.

"The Iranian people are defenceless today, and despite all that, they are out on the streets," he told broadcaster France Inter, denouncing the brutality of the crackdown, which has left at least 600 people dead, according to monitors.

"When a regime ... uses weapons of war against its own people, that is to say, to cause bloodshed, it is not just to make people go home, which is why the people need the international community to help and support them," said Panahi.

"Any silence today, anywhere in the world, will one day have to answer to history," said the director who last year won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize for his drama "It Was Just an Accident."

After demonstrations, including protests that followed the death in 2022 of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly violating the dress code imposed on women and protests against petrol prices several years earlier, "we have reached a climax," the filmmaker said.

"All these movements and revolts have brought us to this point. And I think it's time to put an end to it."

Sparked by economic grievances, the nationwide protests have grown into one of the biggest challenges yet to the theocratic system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution ousted the shah.