filmvetare

The Iranian director Jafar Panahi. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

The jailed Iranian film director Jafar Panahi, who has been on hunger strike for more than a week, is expected to be released today on bail of 2bn rials (£140,000), his wife said.

Panahi, winner of many international awards and a supporter of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in last year's disputed presidential election, was arrested in March along with his wife and daughter. His family was later freed.

"Based on what we have been told, Panahi will be released tonight between 7 and 11 pm (1430-1830GMT)," his wife, Tahereh Saeedi, said. She said the bail had already been deposited.

Panahi is held at Tehran's Evin jail, where human rights groups say many political prisoners are detained.

Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said yesterday that Panahi would be released on bail, but did not say when it would happen.

The French film star Juliette Binoche criticised Iran for imprisoning Panahi during her acceptance speech for the best actress award at the Cannes film festival on Sunday, saying: "His fault is to be an artist, to be independent."

Panahi had said he would not end his hunger strike until he was allowed to have access to his lawyer, receive visits from his family and be unconditionally released until a court hearing was held. His family and lawyer visited him last week.

"We had a meeting with him on Thursday along with the prosecutor and, although his general health condition was good, he looked physically weak," Saeedi said.

Panahi, whose films portray ordinary life in Iran, often examining social issues faced by women in the conservative Islamic state, had been due to sit on the Cannes festival jury.

He won the festival's Camera d'Or prize for his 1995 movie White Balloon. Senior French government ministers called on Iran this month to free him.

Iran's election in June last year plunged the Islamic state into months of political turmoil.

The pro-reform opposition says it was rigged to secure the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the authorities portrayed the huge protests that erupted after the vote as a foreign-backed bid to undermine the clerical establishment.

Thousands of opposition supporters were detained after the vote. Most of them have since been freed but more than 80 people have been jailed for up to 15 years. Two people put on trial after the election have been executed.