DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Iran has freed an award-winning filmmaker six months after arresting him for criticizing the government, according to a pro-reform newspaper on Monday.
Mohammad Rasoulof, whose film “There is No Evil,” premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2020, is one of several prominent artists, athletes, and other celebrities detained recently for criticizing authorities.
In July, he was arrested for criticizing the government’s crackdown on protests in the southwestern city of Abadan in the aftermath of a deadly building collapse. After a 22-year-old woman died in the custody of the country’s morality police, nationwide protests erupted two months later.
Rasoulof was recently furloughed from prison and formally released, according to the Shargh newspaper, which is associated with the country’s reform movement, without specifying the dates or providing additional information. There was no official response.
Iran Released The Actor Earlier This Month
They released famed director Jafar Panahi earlier this month after he was arrested in July after inquiring about the detention of Rasoulof and another colleague. Authorities also granted bail to Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti, who had been detained for criticizing the latest protest crackdown.
Iranians took to the streets in protest of the death in September of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish Iranian woman detained by moral police for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code. Protests turned into calls for the overthrow of the country’s ruling clerics, posing one of the most difficult challenges they have faced since taking power in the 1979 revolution.
According to Human Rights Activists, a group that has closely monitored the unrest, at least 529 protesters have been killed and nearly 20,000 arrested since the protests began. Official figures for those killed or arrested in Iran have not been released.
“There Is No Evil,” which tells four stories loosely related to the use of the death penalty in Iran, won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020. Rasoulof was unable to accept the award because of an Iranian government travel ban.
SOURCE – (AP)
