Iranian director Jafar Panahi was arrested again last week in Tehran and sentenced to six years in prison, Iranian judicial authorities announced Tuesday (19/7).
The sentence refers to a 2010 case, which served under house arrest – disregarded in the new sentence. According to an official statement by spokesman Masud Setayeshi, he has already been transferred to the Evin Detention Center to serve his sentence.
The director was found guilty of “anti-government propaganda” for supporting the 2009 protests against the re-election of the ultra-conservative Mahmud Ahmadinejad as president of the Islamic Republic. Detained for two months in 2010, he was placed under house arrest and banned from filming for 25 years.
But Panahi resisted. He continued to make films illegally. The documentary “This Is Not a Movie” (2011), which portrays his daily life under government restrictions, was brought to the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 as a birthday cake. Even the “closed tents” had to be smuggled out of the country. Either way, he filmed him within the confines of his house arrest. But, in an open confrontation, he took to the streets in disguise to shoot “Taxi Tehran”, winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival 2015. After the end of the planned period of house arrest, he felt even more at ease. in filming “3 Faces”. , which won the trophy for best screenplay at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
The decision to send him to prison, however, was for a reason unrelated to the films he made. Last Monday (7/11), Panahi decided to follow the case of another winner of the Golden Bear, Mohammad Rasulof (“Not bad”), arrested by the regime. Arriving at the Tehran court, he was arrested in the act, despite the period served under house arrest.
Rasoulof was arrested along with his colleague Mostafa Aleahmad for participating in protests related to the collapse of a building in the southwest of the country in May. The tragedy has provoked in the country several protests of solidarity with the families of the victims and against the authorities, accused of corruption and incompetence.
The accumulation of arrests of directors in Iran has sparked protests in the global film community.
The organizers of the Cannes Film Festival have declared that they strongly condemn the arrests, as well as “the wave of repression carried out by Iran against its artists”. For its part, the Venice Film Festival called for the “immediate release” of the directors, while the Berlin festival said it was “dismayed and outraged” by the arrest.
On Friday (7/15) the French Foreign Ministry denounced a phenomenon that illustrates “the worrying deterioration of the situation of artists in Iran”.
However, it’s not just the filmmakers who are bothering the Iranian authorities. Any behavior considered inappropriate led to severe repression. In May 2014, police arrested men and women who filmed a video dancing to Pharrell Williams’ song “Happy”. Despite the international repercussions, including the musician’s appeal, the detainees were sentenced to six months in prison and 91 lashes.
Source: Terra
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
