A court in Iran has sentenced acclaimed movie director Mohammad Rasoulof to eight years in prison and flogging for national security crimes, his lawyer said on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
In a statement on social platform X, Babak Paknia said the court found Rasoulof\u2019s films and documentaries to be \u201cexamples of collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the security of the country.\u201d <\/p>\n
The court also imposed an unspecified fine and ordered the confiscation of Rasoulof\u2019s property, Paknia added. <\/p>\n
Rasoulof won a Golden Bear for best film at the Berlinale festival in 2020 for \u201cThere Is No Evil\u201d and his film \u201cA Man of Integrity\u201d was recognized for a \u201cCertain Regard\u201d honor at Cannes in 2017. The writer-director\u2019s latest work, \u201cThe Seed of the Sacred Fig\u201d is due to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in France next week. <\/p>\n
Ahead of the film\u2019s release, the director and his production team faced pressure from the Iranian government, his lawyer has alleged, writing last week on X that some actors had been interrogated and barred from leaving the country by officials. According to Paknia, some also alleged they were asked by officials to tell Rasoulof to withdraw the film from the festival. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
In 2022, an Iranian court sentenced Rasoulof to one year in prison and banned him from making films for two years on the charge of \u201cpropaganda against the system,\u201d according to Human Rights Watch. Iranian authorities have previously arrested him multiple times and confiscated his passport because of his work, HRW said. <\/p>\n
In a statement, Iran\u2019s Independent Filmmaker Association criticized the latest sentence handed to the director. <\/p>\n
\u201cOnce again, the judiciary\u2019s verdict against Mohammad Rasoulof proved that the law is only a playground for stubbornness and revenge in the legal system contaminated by government jurisprudence,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIndependent and freedom-loving cinematographers condemn the invalid judgment of the judiciary against Mohammad Rasoulof and stand by him and all the artists who make fun of government censorship.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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A court in Iran has sentenced acclaimed movie director Mohammad Rasoulof to eight years in prison and flogging for national security crimes, his lawyer said on Wednesday. In a statement on social platform X, Babak Paknia said the court found Rasoulof\u2019s films and documentaries to be \u201cexamples of collusion with the intention of committing a <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3009,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}