Dissident Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi arrested: Media
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Jafar Panahi has won a slew of awards at international festivals for films that have critiqued modern Iran.
PHOTO: AFP
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TEHERAN (AFP) - Award-winning dissident Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi was arrested on Monday (July 11), the third director to be detained in less than a week, the Mehr News Agency said.
"Jafar Panahi has been arrested today when he went to the prosecutor's office to follow up on the situation of another film-maker, Mohammad Rasoulof," Mehr reported.
State news agency Irna had reported late on Friday that Rasoulof, also an award winning film-maker, had been arrested along with colleague Mostafa Aleahmad.
Panahi, 62, has won a slew of awards at international festivals for films that have critiqued modern Iran, including the top prize in Berlin for Taxi in 2015, and best screenplay at Cannes for Three Faces in 2018.
Following his support for anti-government protests, he was arrested in 2010. He was later convicted of "propaganda against the system", sentenced to six years in jail and handed a ban on directing or writing films.
Since then, he has been barred from leaving the country to pick up any of his awards.
Restrictions
Rasoulof, 49, won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2020 with his film, There Is No Evil, but was likewise unable to accept the award in person as he was barred from leaving Iran.
Rasoulof and Aleahmad were arrested over events relating to a deadly building collapse of the Metropol building in the city of Abadan, an event which sparked angry protests, Irna said.
"In the midst of the heart-breaking incident in Abadan's Metropol, (the filmmakers) were involved in inciting unrest and disrupting the psychological security of society," the agency said.
The 10-storey Metropol building, that was under construction in southwestern Khuzestan province, collapsed on May 23, killing 43 people. It sparked demonstrations in solidarity with victims' families.
Demonstrators demanded that "incompetent officials" responsible for the tragedy be prosecuted and punished, while many faced tear gas, warning shots and arrests by the police.
A group of Iranian filmmakers led by Rasoulof published an open letter calling on the security forces to "lay down their arms" in the face of outrage over the "corruption, theft, inefficiency and repression" surrounding the Abadan collapse.
Cannes film festival organisers, in a statement on Monday, said they "strongly condemn the (directors') arrests as well as the wave of repression evidently under way in Iran against its artists", calling for their immediate release.
The Berlin film festival last week also protested against the arrests of Rasoulof and Aleahmad.
Rasoulof's passport had been confiscated after his film A Man Of Integrity (2017) premiered at Cannes, where it won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival.
