Days before the premiere of his new film The Seed of the Sacred Fig in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, acclaimed Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has been sentenced to eight years in prison and flogging in Iran for national security crimes.
He’ll also be subjected to a fine and the confiscation of property.
In a statement on X, Rasoulof’s lawyer Babak Paknia said the court found Rasoulof’s films and documentaries to be “examples of collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the security of the country.”
The filmmaker, 52, has been a target of the authoritarian regime for years, and the timing of this sentence appears to be an attempt for the director and the Cannes Film Festival to remove the film from the festival altogether.
Ahead of the film’s premiere, the director’s production team already faced pressure from the Iranian government. Paknia wrote last week on X that some actors had been interrogated and barred from leaving the country by officials. According to Paknia, some also alleged they were asked by officials to pressure Rasoulof to withdraw the film from the festival.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig Tree is apparently about a judge for the Revolutionary Court in Tehran dealing with the fallout from the nationwide protests that have swept the country in recent years, and he becomes paranoid when his gun disappears.
In 2022, an Iranian court sentenced Rasoulof to one year in prison and banned him from making films for two years on the charge of “propaganda against the system,” according to Human Rights Watch. Iranian authorities have previously arrested him multiple times and confiscated his passport because of his work.
In a statement, Iran’s Independent Filmmaker Association criticized the latest sentence handed to the director.
“Once again, the judiciary’s verdict against Mohammad Rasoulof proved that the law is only a playground for stubbornness and revenge in the legal system contaminated by government jurisprudence,” it said. “Independent and freedom-loving cinematographers condemn the invalid judgment of the judiciary against Mohammad Rasoulof and stand by him and all the artists who make fun of government censorship.”
Rasoulof, who won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2020 for his anti-capital punishment film There Is No Evil, was previously detained in July 2022 for sharing comments denouncing the government crackdown on the nationwide protests that year. He was temporarily released in 2023 due to health concerns, and was later pardoned and sentenced to one year of penal servitude, as well as a two-year ban from leaving Iran on the charge of “propaganda against the regime.”
The director was asked to join the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury last year, but could not attend due to these imposed travel restrictions.
Previously, Cannes has criticized the Islamic Republic’s repression of filmmakers, with the festival calling the imprisonment of Iranian director Saeed Roustaee a "serious violation of free speech” in 2023.
Roustaee was sentenced to six months in prison over his film Leila's Brothers, which screened at the 2022 edition of the festival. The film depicted economic struggles in Tehran.
The 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will open on 14 May and last until 25 May.
