Iranian filmmaker and opponent Jafar Panahi, Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival, was arrested in Tehran on Monday, according to an Iranian news agency, bringing the number of directors arrested in the country to three fewer. of a week. Aged 62, Mr. Panahi is one of the most awarded Iranian filmmakers. He had notably won the Screenplay Prize at Cannes in 2018 with Three Faces, three years after the Golden Bear in Berlin for Taxi Tehran. The Iranian authorities had already arrested two filmmakers on Friday, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad, accused of ” disturbances to public order.” “Jafar Panahi was arrested today (Monday) on his arrival at the Tehran prosecutor’s office to follow up on the case of another director, Mohammad Rasoulof”, detained since Friday, according to the agency. Mehr press. “There is still no information on the reason for Panahi’s arrest, his connection to the Rasoulof case or to other people arrested last week,” she added. A dissident artist, Mr. Panahi was sentenced in 2010 to six years in prison and a twenty-year ban on directing or writing films, traveling or speaking in the media. However, he continued to work and live in Iran. He had been convicted of “propaganda against the regime”, after having supported the 2009 protest movement against the re-election of the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of the Islamic Republic. arrestsMohammad Rasoulof, also awarded abroad, and Mostafa Aleahmad were arrested on Friday. They are accused of having encouraged demonstrations after the deadly collapse of a building in the south-west of the country in May, according to the official news agency Irna. After the tragedy, a group of Iranian filmmakers led by Mr. Rasoulof had published an open letter at the end of May calling on the security forces “to lay down their arms” in the face of anger at the “corruption” and “incompetence” of officials.MM. Panahi and Rasoulof had also denounced mid-May, with other Iranian filmmakers and actors, the arrest of several of their colleagues in Iran. The repression and censorship constitute “a violation of freedom of expression” and “reduce the safety of directors to the minimum”, they denounced in an open letter. The organizers of the Berlinale film festival, which had awarded to Mr. Rasoulof the highest distinction in 2020, protested last week against the arrest of the filmmaker and his colleague, demanding the release of the two artists.Mohammad Rasoulof, 50, won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2020 for his film The Devil Does Not Exist, but he was unable to travel to Germany. His passport had been confiscated after his previous feature film in 2017, A Man of Integrity, presented at Cannes, where he won the prize in the Un certain regard category. In recent times, the Iranian authorities have carried out numerous arrests, including that of of a figure of the reform movement, Mostafa Tajzadeh, arrested on Friday on the charge of “activities against state security”.
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