LONDON: The organizers of the Cannes Film Festival have condemned the arrest of Iranian filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof, Mostafa Al-Ahmad and Jafar Panahi and called for their immediate release.
Rasoulof and Al-Ahmad were taken into custody on Friday after protesting on social media against violent crackdowns on Iranian civilians. Panahi was held on Monday after he went to the prosecutor’s office to follow up on the arrest of Rasoulof. They are being detained at an undisclosed location.
The Iranian government previously banned director Rasoulof from traveling. He has been under house arrest and prevented from working since 2017, when his film “A Man of Integrity” was screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the main prize in the in the Un Certain Regard section. In 2010 he was sentenced to six years in prison, reduced to a year on appeal, and banned from making films for 20 years.
Fellow director Panahi is another well-known figure in contemporary Iranian cinema. His most notable films include “Taxi,” which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2015, and “Three Faces,” which won the Best Screenplay award at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. He was also sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison and handed a 20-year ban on making films.
“The Festival de Cannes strongly condemns these arrests as well as the wave of repression obviously in progress in Iran against its artists,” festival organizers said. “The festival calls for the immediate release of Mohammad Rasoulof, Mostafa (Al-Ahmad) and Jafar Panahi.
“The Festival de Cannes also wishes to reassert its support to all those who, throughout the world, are subjected to violence and repression. The festival remains and will always remain a haven for artists from all over the world and it will relentlessly be at their service in order to convey their voices loud and clear, in the defense of freedom of creation and freedom of speech.”
