Iranian filmmaker, producer faces prison over showing movie at Cannes without government permission

(17 Aug 2023)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Cannes Festival, Cannes, France - 25 May 2022
1. Various of (2nd right) Saeed Poursamimi and others posing for photographs on Red Carpet at Cannes festival 2022
STORYLINE:
An Iranian filmmaker and his producer reportedly face prison time and being barred from filmmaking after they showcased a movie at the Cannes Film Festival without government approval, drawing immediate criticism internationally from leading American director Martin Scorsese and others.

Director Saeed Roustayi and producer Javad Norouzbeigi traveled to Cannes last year to show “Leila's Brothers,” competing for the festival's grand Palme d’Or prize.

The film focuses on a family struggling to make ends meet as Iran faces international sanctions and includes sequences showing protests in the Islamic Republic as a series of nationwide demonstrations have shaken the nation, including those over the death of Mahsa Amini last year.

“Leila's Brothers” didn't take the Palme d’Or but ended up winning two others at Cannes. However, authorities in Tehran did not nominate the film for the Academy Awards despite its success at Cannes, something Roustayi later criticized in published remarks.

On Tuesday, Etemad newspaper reported that Tehran's Revolutionary Court sentenced the two men to six months in prison over creating “propaganda against the system.”

The men showcased the film “in line with the counterrevolutionary movement ... with the aim of fame-seeking in order to prepare fodder and intensify the media battle against Iran's religious sovereignty,” the judgement read, according to Etemad, a Tehran-based newspaper run by reformists.

The judge suspended all but 10-odd days of the prison sentence for the next five years, the newspaper said. However, the men also will be banned from filmmaking and communicating with those in the field during that period, as well as must attend a mandatory filmmaking course while “maintaining national and moral interests.”

The sentence can be apealled.

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