May 13. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Iranian film director Mohamad Rasulof, winner of the Golden Bear at the 2020 Berlin Festival for the anti-death penalty film ‘The Lives of Others’, has fled Iran across the border to Europe after be sentenced to eight years in prison by a revolutionary court.
“With great regret, I choose exile. The Islamic Republic confiscated my passport in September 2017, so I had to leave Iran secretly,” reads a statement from the film director collected by the Iran International television channel.
On his Instagram profile he has published a video in which you can see him walking in front of a landscape full of mountains. “Knowing that the news of my new film would soon be revealed, I undoubtedly know that another new sentence would be added to those eight years,” she said.
His lawyer, Babak Paknia, announced last week on the social network
His next film, called ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’, focuses on a story about a judge who suffers the consequences of the anti-government protests that broke out after the death of the young Mahsa Amini in police custody for wearing the veil incorrectly.
Rasulof was arrested in July 2022 for signing a declaration called “Put down your weapons” that called for restraint from the Iranian authorities during the repression of protests over the collapse of a building in the province of Khuzestan (southern).
The Metropol, a ten-story shopping center, was still under construction when the collapse occurred, resulting in more than 40 deaths. After the incident there were a series of protests against the mayor of Abadan and two of his predecessors, who were arrested on suspicion of negligence.
Rasulof was previously arrested, in 2011, along with fellow Iranian director Yafar Panahi, and both were sentenced to six years in prison. In addition, they were banned from making films for 20 years, although in Rasulof’s case this was reduced.
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