Well-known Iranian filmmaker and Berlinale winner Mohammad Rasulof has reportedly been sentenced to several years in prison. As lawyer Babak Paknia wrote on X on Wednesday, a court in the capital Tehran sentenced the 52-year-old to eight years in prison, of which five years can be carried out. In addition, the director should be punished with lashes.
According to the defense attorney, the judiciary justified the strict sentence with violations of national security. Rasulof will also have to pay a fine and confiscation of property was also mentioned. There was initially no confirmation of the verdict from the Iranian judiciary.
Some Iranian media picked up the lawyer’s post. Just over a year ago, Rasulof was banned from leaving the country. According to activists, this was intended to prevent the director from participating in the Cannes Film Festival. The filmmaker was only released from Tehran’s notorious Ewin Prison in February 2023 after around seven months in prison.
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Before his imprisonment, he had made critical comments about the collapse of a shopping arcade in the southwestern Iranian city of Abadan, which resulted in many deaths. Rasulof, who received the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2020 for his film “There is no evil,” is considered an extremely critical filmmaker in the country. Despite being banned from working for many years, he always managed to make films. He lived alternately in Tehran and Hamburg.