Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof has been sentenced to eight years in jail, in keeping with his lawyer.
In a publish on X, the filmmaker’s lawyer Babak Paknia wrote that Iran‘s Islamic Revolution Court sentenced Rasoulof to eight years of imprisonment, flogging, a effective and confiscation of property. The judgment was confirmed in a Court of Appeal and the case has now been despatched for enforcement, Paknia wrote.
The lawyer added that the principle motive for issuing the sentence had been Rasoulof’s public statements and making movies and documentaries, which within the courtroom’s opinion, are “examples of collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the country’s security.”
The information comes within the wake of Iranian authorities exerting heavy strain on Rasoulof to tug his newest work “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” from the Cannes Film Festival by harassing the movie’s producers and actors had been summoned for questioning and banned from leaving the nation.
Paknia, who’s a human rights lawyer, had written in a earlier X publish that a number of unspecified actors and producers on “Sacred Fig” had been summoned and questioned by authorities. He added that Iran’s authorities additionally pressured them to persuade Rasoulof to withdraw the movie from the pageant.
Furthermore, “Some of the film’s actors have been banned from leaving, and according to their statements, after several hours of interrogation, they were asked to ask the director to remove the film from the Cannes festival,” Paknia had mentioned within the X publish.
Rasoulof was incarcerated by Iranian authorities in July 2022 after he posted an attraction urging Iranian safety forces to cease utilizing weapons throughout protests prompted by a constructing collapse within the southwestern metropolis of Abadan. He was launched in February 2023 for well being causes.
Earlier, Rasoulof was not allowed by Iranian authorities to attend the Berlinale in 2020. That 12 months, the director’s daughter, Baran Rasoulof, who stars in “There Is No Evil,” picked up his Golden Bear.
Last 12 months, in May, Rasoulof was banned from leaving Iran to function a member of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard jury.