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.