The well-known Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, laureate of the Golden Bear at the 2020 Berlinale, would have been sentenced to several years in prison, the DPA agency reports on Thursday, quoted by Agerpres.
His lawyer, Babak Paknia, wrote on the X social network on Wednesday that a court in Tehran sentenced Mohammad Rasoulof, 52, to eight years in prison, five of which must be served. The director is also to be flogged.
According to the defense lawyer, the magistrates declared that at the origin of the severe punishment is a violation of national security.
Rasoulof was also ordered to pay a fine. Confiscation of assets was also mentioned.
There is currently no confirmation of this decision from the Iranian judicial authorities. Some Iranian media picked up the lawyer’s post.
Just over a year ago, Rasoulof was banned from traveling abroad.
The filmmaker was released from the famous Ewin prison in Tehran in February 2023, after about seven months of detention. Before being imprisoned, he criticized the collapse of a shopping mall in the southwestern Iranian city of Abadan, which resulted in many deaths.
Rasoulof, who was awarded the Golden Bear at the 2020 Berlinale for his film There is No Evil, about capital punishment in Iran, is considered critical of the regime in his country.
He lived alternately in Tehran and Hamburg and continued his work, despite the fact that he was forbidden to make films.
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