Mohammad Rasoulof, an award-winning Iranian filmmaker, announced on Monday that he had fled his home country after receiving an eight-year prison sentence and receiving beating for” cooperation to act against national safety.”
Rasoulof, who is currently a refugee in Europe, will be present this week at the Cannes Film Festival’s launch of his movie The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
In an Instagram article on Monday, Rasoulof made fun of the terrorist-supporting Egyptian dictatorship by sharing a picture of himself crossing the border to freedom. He may possess escaped into Turkey from the location of the video, which suggested whereabouts.
” If you think Iran’s edges are in your arms, you are in a joyful dream”, he sneered. No power can force its will on Iran, as the phrase “if physical Iran faces beneath the shoes of your spiritual tyranny, social Iran is dead in the typical minds of millions of Iranians who were forced to leave Iran as a result of your brutality.” From immediately, I am a native of historical Iran”.
The filmmaker claimed that he and his brother exiles were “impatiently waiting to destroy you and your program of tyranny in the depths of history.”
Rasoulof even took a minute to bless the “friends, acquaintances, and people who kindly, sincerely, and sometimes by risking their lives, helped me get out of the border and achieve a secure location on the hard and long course of this trip”.
Babak Paknia, Rasoulof’s attorney, stated on Monday that his client would attend the Cannes film festival, but the French producers of his picture were much more ambiguous, stating only that he was” now residing in an undisclosed location in Europe” and that he “might be current at the world premiere of his most recent picture.”
Due to” concerns about reprisals by the Iranian regime,” the distribution company Films Boutique subsidiary Parallel45 claimed the cast, crew, and script for the new film The Seed of the Sacred Fig had to be kept secret.
Some of the actors in The Seed of the Sacred Fig have escaped Iran, according to Rasoulof, but others are still imprisoned, harassed, or tortured to prevent the release of his new film. Early in May, Iranian authorities forbade the departure of the majority of the film’s cast and crew. Numerous of the actors have already been subjected to questioning and forced to ask Rasoulof to end the film’s Cannes run.
The murderous regime in Tehran’s previous film, There Is No Evil, was a blistering condemnation of the death penalty and censorship by Rasoulof. It was secretly recorded and smuggled out of the country for publication during one of the regime’s stringent eras, when Rasoulof was prohibited from making any films or traveling abroad.
The Berlin Film Festival’s 2020 competition took home the top prize, according to There Is No Evil. Rasoulof could not pick up the award in person, as his passport had been confiscated. Soon after receiving the award, he was given a year in prison for producing three movies that were regarded as “propaganda against the system.”
The renowned 51-year-old director was detained in 2022 because he was one of the many Iranians who criticized the government for its incompetence in the Abadan, southwest of Tehran, building collapse.
More than 30 people were killed when the building collapsed, and angry protesters gathered at the site of the collapse to accuse the government of corruption and incompetence in its poor construction. The government responded by sending a cleric to demand that they stop protesting because they treated the dead poorly. When that failed, the government dispatched thugs to use tear gas and truncheons to clobber them.
In a statement, Rasoulof and other Iranian artists and celebrities demanded that the government “put your gun down” and address the protesters ‘ complaints rather than using force to disperse them. The regime used his signature on this letter, plus his social media activity, to accuse him of taking” action against national security”. He defied the rule and created The Seed of the Sacred Fig., which he was prohibited from making for at least a year.
Rasoulof said on Monday that he chose to go into exile because he learned he had been given an eight-year prison sentence plus flogging for the outstanding charges starting in 2022. Iranian courts frequently convict people in secret and leave them largely unaided until they are summoned to deliver their punishments.
He said,” 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,” adding that the subject matter of the movie he intends to release at Cannes would displease the regime even more than There Is No Evil did.
France24 added Rasoulof’s potential appearance and film debut to the list of geopolitical intrigues roiling Cannes this year, along with the war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, and a “belated# MeToo reckoning that has rattled the country’s film industry in recent months”.
The latter made reference to French filmmaker Judith Godreche, who gave her account of the sexual abuse she endured as a teenager actress in a documentary this year that shocked the French film industry. A short film was just created by Godreche based on hundreds of letters written by French women who had personal experiences with sexual abuse. Her film, entitled” Me Too,” is scheduled to debut Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival’s most prestigious section.
