Famous Iranian director, awarded with the “Golden Bear”, sentenced in his own country to hard years in prison

Famous Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof has been sentenced to eight years in prison and caning for so-called national security crimes, his lawyer, Babak Paknia, said on Wednesday, according to CNN.

In a statement on the X social media platform, Paknia said the court considered Rasoulof’s films and documentaries to be “examples of complicity with the intention of committing a crime against the security of the country.”

The court also imposed an unspecified fine and ordered the confiscation of Rasoulof’s assets, the lawyer added.

Rasoulof won the “Golden Bear” award for the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2020 for “There Is No Evil”, and his film “A Man of Integrity” received an award in the “Certain Regard” section ” at Cannes in 2017. The writer-director’s latest work, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in France next week.

Ahead of the film’s release, the director and his production team faced pressure from the Iranian government, his lawyer claimed, writing in X last week that some actors were interrogated and barred from leaving the country by officials. According to Paknia, some of them also stated that they were asked by officials to tell Rasoulof to withdraw the film from the festival.

Paknia also wrote last week, on X, that it was unclear whether Rasoulof would be able to travel to Cannes to attend the screening of his film.

In 2022, an Iranian court sentenced Rasoulof to a year in prison and banned him from making films for two years on charges of “propaganda against the system,” according to Human Rights Watch. Previously, Iranian authorities arrested him several times and confiscated his passport because of his activities, according to HRW.

In a statement, the Independent Directors Association of Iran criticized the latest sentence given to the director.

“Once again, the verdict given by the judiciary against Mohammad Rasoulof proved that the law is only a playground for stubbornness and revenge in the legal system contaminated by government jurisprudence.

Independent and freedom-loving cinematographers condemn the judicial system’s decision against Mohammad Rasoulof and stand with him and all the artists who make fun of government censorship,” the cited document reads.