Iranian filmmaker and Berlinale winner Mohammed Rassulof and a colleague have been arrested on charges of incitement to hatred. Together with Mostafa Al-Ahmad, Rassulof is said to have endangered public order with an appeal against violence and also cooperated with opponents of the regime, the judicial authority said, according to the state news agency IRNA.
The organizers of the Berlinale have protested the arrest of the Iranian filmmaker and winner of the Berlinale. “It is shocking that artists are being jailed for their peaceful efforts against violence,” Berlinale’s management duo Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian told the German news agency dpa on Saturday. They called on the Iranian authorities to release the two directors immediately.
The background to the call against violence is the collapse of a shopping arcade in the city of Abadan in far southwestern Iran in May this year, killing more than 40 people. There were critical protests against the regime there, which were violently suppressed by the police and security forces.
Call for an end to police brutality in Iran
With the appeal by Rassulof and Al-Ahmad and the hashtag “Put your gun down”, more than 70 people from the Iranian film industry called for an end to police brutality.
Rassulof, 49, who received the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2020 for his film “There Is No Evil”, is considered a filmmaker who is critical of the regime in the country. Despite being banned from working for years, he still managed to make films time and again. He lives alternately in Tehran and Hamburg.
Source: Krone
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