Last year, while awaiting appeal, Panahi was under house arrest in his Tehran apartment.

NEWYORKER: Born Free

In 2011, the jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi won the award.

BBC: Jane Campion to be presented with Cannes director honour

Last year, Jafar Panahi, the fifty-one-year-old Iranian film director currently under house arrest in Tehran, invited a documentary-filmmaker friend, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, to come over.

NEWYORKER: This Is Not a Film

Costantini and Panahi have instilled the site with their film knowledge, and paved the way for the site's other major collaboration with masters of the vintage re-release, the Criterion Collection.

CNN: Scorsese and The Auteurs put film classics online for free

While his case was on appeal, and he was under house arrest in his Tehran apartment, Mr. Panahi and a documentarian friend shot "This Is Not a Film, " using a professional video camera and an iPhone.

WSJ: This Is Not a Film | Let the Bullets Fly | Being Flynn | A Defiant 'No' to Iran's Repression | Film Reviews by Joe Morgenstern

Enter Argentine millionaire, Eduardo Costantini of Costa Films, the company behind 2007 Berlinale winner "Elite Troop, " and Hengameh Panahi of Paris-based distributor Celluloid Dreams which represents films like Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet, " which won the Grand Prize at Cannes Film Festival this year.

CNN: Scorsese and The Auteurs put film classics online for free