All over the world courageous media makers willing to take risks refuse to accept such machinations. These people are honoured through the "Prize for the Freedom and Future of the Media" which is awarded annually by the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig. The Prize was presented to Jafar Panahi and Nedim Şener on 8 October 2015.
Jafar Panahi and his family were subjected to reprisals when the Iranian director, a winner of several awards for his films, openly supported the opposition movement of the "Green Revolution" after the presidential elections in 2009. In 2010 he was arrested without charge along with his wife and child, and went to prison for three months. He was later sentenced to six years imprisonment and was prohibited from exercising his profession for 20 years for reasons of "propaganda against the system". However, the 55-year-old is still managing to bring out new films. "Taxi Teheran", his most recent film, won the Golden Bear at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival.
The German-born journalist Nedim Şener works for various Turkish newspapers and also publishes books on corruption, fraud, organised crime, tax evasion and the funding of terrorist organisations by intelligence services. When the publisher of a weekly Armenian-Turkish newspaper was shot in the street in 2007, Şener uncovered those behind this attack. The charge of "illegal distribution of confidential information" had to be dropped. However, because he is alleged to have planned a putsch against Erdogan as a member of an underground group, the 50-year-old was arrested in 2011 and imprisoned for 375 days. He is still regarded as a terrorist in Turkey.