Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has been released from prison. The PEN center also reports that the writer Arash Ganji is also free – Ganji was arrested in 2019 for campaigning for free speech and for translating a book about a Kurdish uprising against IS in Syria. He was sentenced to five years in prison for “conspiracy against national security”.
Mohammad Rasoulof, whose last film “Yet Evil Doesn’t Exist” won the Golden Bear at the 2020 Berlinale, was arrested in July last year. Rasoulof had inquired about director Jafar Panahi, who had also been arrested and ended up in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran after protests, and was then arrested himself: he had called on the police to stop using violence after protests in Abadan in May 2022. Panahi was arrested on February 3 released on bail after going on a hunger strike.
The Industry Journal Variety Rasoulof’s lawyer in France, Maryam Kianersi, quotes as saying that it was only a temporary release – Mohammad Rasoulof had been released to go home for two weeks for health reasons. Mohammad Rasoulof and Jafar Panahi have previously been tried after taking part in protests in 2009. Both were banned from working. Mohammad Rasoulof’s films, including the Berlinale winner “Yet Evil Doesn’t Exist” about the death penalty, are not shown in Iran.