Director Sentenced to Prison, Flogging Flees Iran

One of Iran's leading film directors says that with a "heavy heart," he has chosen exile over imprisonment. Mohammed Rasoulof, whose latest movie, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, is due to premiere at the Cannes film festival next Friday, was sentenced last week to eight years in prison, plus flogging, Reuters reports. "Knowing that the news of my new film would be revealed very soon, I knew that without a doubt, a new sentence would be added to these eight years," he said in a statement. The 52-year-old, whose passport was confiscated by authorities, said he had made his way to Europe after a "long and complicated journey."

• Cast, crew threatened. Rasoulof said that in the film, he "tried to achieve a cinematic narrative that is far from the narrative dominated by the censorship in the Islamic Republic, and closer to its reality." He said cast and crew members had been threatened by authorities and while some actors had fled the country, others are under pressure from security services, the Guardian reports.

• The film. In The Seed of the Sacred Fig, "investigating judge Iman grapples with paranoia amid political unrest in Tehran," according to a plot summary at IMDB. It's not clear whether Rasoulof will be attending the May 24 premiere. He said Iran tried to pressure Cannes organizers to drop the film.
• Government's reasons: A human rights lawyer representing Rasoulof said last week that the main reason provided by the government for the latest sentence is his client's public statements. Babak Paknia said officials also called the films "examples of collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the country's security."
• Previous prizes, sentences. All of Rasoulof's films have been banned in Iran, but he has won international acclaim, Variety reports. He has been arrested and jailed multiple times for allegedly filming without a permit. He was sentenced to six years in prison, later suspended, after the anti-censorship Goodbye won two prizes at Cannes in 2011. He won the Berlin film festival's top prize in 2020 with the anti-capital punishment There Is No Evil, but he was not allowed to attend. He was arrested in 2022 as anti-government protests shook the country and was released the following year.
• Intensifying repression. In his statement, the director said the "scope and intensity" of repression in Iran has accelerated. "I strongly object to the unjust recent ruling against me that forces me into exile," Rasoulof wrote. "However, the judicial system of the Islamic Republic has issued so many cruel and strange decisions that I do not feel it is my place to complain about my sentence. Death sentences are being executed as the Islamic Republic has targeted the lives of protesters and civil rights activists. It's hard to believe, but right now as I'm writing this, the young rapper, Toomaj Salehi, is held in prison and has been sentenced to death."

(More Iran stories.)