Iran has released an award-winning filmmaker more than six months after arresting him for criticizing the government, a pro-reform newspaper reported yesterday.
Mohammad Rasoulof, whose 2020 film There is No Evil won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, was one of several prominent artists, athletes and other celebrities detained for criticizing authorities.
He was arrested in July last year for criticizing the government’s crackdown on protests in the southwestern city of Abadan over a deadly building collapse. Two months later, nationwide protests broke out after a 22-year-old woman died in the custody of the nation’s morality police.
Photo: Reuters
The Shargh newspaper, which is associated with the nation’s reform movement, said Rasoulof had been furloughed from prison and was formally released, without specifying the dates or providing further information.
There was no official comment.
Iran earlier this month released famed director Jafar Panahi, who was arrested in July last year after inquiring about the detention of Rasoulof and another colleague. Authorities also released Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti on bail, after she was detained for criticizing the crackdown on the latest protests.
Iranians took to the streets over the September last year death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish Iranian who was detained by the morality police for allegedly violating the nation’s strict Islamic dress code. The protests escalated into calls for the overthrow of the nation’s ruling clerics, marking one of the biggest challenges they have faced since coming to power in a 1979 revolution.
At least 529 protesters have been killed and nearly 20,000 arrested since those protests began, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has closely monitors the unrest.
Iranian authorities have not released official figures for those killed or arrested.
There Is No Evil, which tells four stories loosely connected to the use of the death penalty in Iran, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2020. Rasoulof was not there to accept the award due to a travel ban imposed on him by Iranian authorities.
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