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.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other