The famous Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, whose latest film will be screened at the Cannes Film Festival, was sentenced to five years in prison by an Iranian court for “collusion against national security,” his lawyer announced on Wednesday.
The director, awarded several times at international festivals, was also sentenced to lashings, a fine and confiscation of his property, Babak Paknia stated in messages published in X. This sentence was not announced by the official Iranian media.
His lawyer indicated that the court had imposed a prison sentence of eight years, of which five years were applicable, and that this sentence had been confirmed on appeal on an unspecified date. The 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which begins on May 14 in the south of France, has selected the new film by Mohammad Rasoulof, The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
On April 30, Babak Paknia claimed that authorities had summoned members of the film’s crew for questioning and pressured them to withdraw the film from international competitions.
Mohammad Rasoulof, 52, was arrested in July 2022 for encouraging protests sparked by a building collapse that killed more than 40 people in May in southwestern Iran.
“Independent filmmakers”
After this tragedy, a group of Iranian filmmakers he led published an open letter calling on security forces “to lay down their arms” in the face of national outrage against the “corruption” and “incompetence” of those responsible. He was then temporarily released for health reasons in January 2023 and prohibited from leaving the territory.
This temporary release came as Iran was rocked by protests sparked by the death, on September 16, 2022, of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, following her arrest by the morality police for alleged violation of the dress code for women.
Mohammad Rasoulof won the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes in 2017 for a man of integrity, the story of a man of simple life who tries to fight against the dishonest maneuvers of a private company that pushes villagers to sell its products. He then received the Golden Bear at the Berlin festival in 2020 for The devil does not exista reflection on free will and the duty to disobey.
Banned from leaving Iranian territory, he was unable to receive his award, since the previous year he was sentenced to a year in prison for “propaganda against the system” after his film. a man of integrity. Mohammad Rasoulof was invited to Cannes in 2023 as a jury member, but he was unable to make the trip, still subject to a travel ban.
In July 2022, authorities arrested internationally renowned dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi when he arrived at a Tehran court to pursue Rasoulof’s case. He was released on bail in February 2023. “We are filmmakers, independent filmmakers,” the two filmmakers wrote in a joint letter to the Venice Film Festival in September 2022.
Source: BFM TV
