Cannes contender Abbas Kiarostami demands release of Iranian film-maker

Detention of would-be Cannes judge Jafar Panahi is 'attack on art itself', says fellow Iranian

Abbas Kiarostami and Juliette Binoche, who stars in his film, Certified Copy, at Cannes film festival, where he called for the release of Jafar Panahi. Photograph: Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images

The film-maker Abbas Kiarostami today launched an appeal for the release of a fellow Iranian who should be judging this year's Cannes film festival.

Kiarostami called the detention of Jafar Panahi an "attack on art", following unconfirmed reports that Panahi was on hunger strike.

Panahi was meant to be one of the jurors on the panel chaired by the film director Tim Burton deciding the winner of this year's Palme d'Or. Instead, he is in jail after being arrested on 1 March, accused of planning to make a film about last year's disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iranian president.

Kiarostami was in Cannes for the premiere of his film, Certified Copy, one of 19 contenders for the festival's top prize. He said Panahi's detention was "intolerable".

"When a filmmaker is imprisoned, it is an attack on art as a whole. We need explanations. I don't understand how a film can be a crime, particularly when that film has not been made," he said.

Journalists were handed copies of an open letter Kiarostami has written to the Iranian authorities demanding Panahi's release.

It is Kiarostami's fourth time in competition atCannes, but with a film of many firsts. For example, Certified Copy is his first film outside Iran and the first in which he uses professional actors.

It has had a mixed reaction critically and even at its first screening there were a few boos. The film is set in Tuscany and follows a French art gallery owner, played by Juliette Binoche, and an English writer, played by the opera singer William Shimell, making his film debut.

Binoche had asked Kiarostami for a film in which she could appear, but the project was delayed for more than a year by her dance collaboration with the choreographer Akram Khan. Kiarostami got Shimell on board after the two worked together on Cosi Fan Tutte at Aix-en-Provence.

Another strong contender premiered today was Xavier Beauvois's Of Men and Gods, which tells the true story of seven Cistercian monks kidnapped and murdered in Algeria in 1996.

Beauvois does not address in the film whether they were killed by the fundamentalist kidnappers or by the army in a bungled rescue attempt. But he does paint a wonderfully evocative picture of life in a monastery and the need for religions to get on.

The lead role of Brother Christian is wonderfully played by Lambert Wilson, who appeared in Cannes looking the direct opposite of his austere character, wearing sunglasses and a retro red tracksuit top unzipped to his navel. There was some confusion when he walked out halfway through the press conference. "I went for a cigarette," he said.