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 shook the nation.
The film also depicts security forces beating demonstrators protesting Iran’s ailing economy, which has already sparked mass protests and bloody security force crackdowns killing hundreds. The family in it loses all its savings over the rapid depreciation of Iran’s rial currency, something Iranians across the country have lived with for years.
Additionally, the aging patriarch, hoarding his family’s wealth and forcing them into squalor for a chance at personal glory, can be seen as an allegory to Iran’s theocracy.
Leila’s Brothers didn’t take the coveted Palme d’Or but ended up winning two other awards at Cannes. However, authorities in Tehran did not nominate the film for the Oscars despite its success at the renowned French film festival, 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 court decision 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 will also 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 is appealable.
No other major media outlet in Iran reported the sentencing and Etemad did not explain how it came about its information. Iran’s Revolutionary Courts conduct closed-door hearings over alleged threats to Iran’s government, taking nearly every case involving a suspect with Western ties or facing accusations of espionage.
The international reaction against the sentence was swift. Scorsese, known for his films Goodfellas, Casino and the upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon, asked people online to sign a petition to protest the men’s sentence “so they can continue to be a force of good in the world.”
The Biarritz International Film Festival, at which Roustayi chaired the jury this year, immediately criticized the sentence as well and asked it be quashed by Iran’s judiciary.
“His only crime is being a free-spirited filmmaker,” the festival said. “Although he’s not even 35, his sharp take on society makes him one of today’s major international filmmakers.”
Even inside Iran, there’s been anger over the sentencing. The Iranian Cinema Directors Association issued an online statement, saying that the race to issue insulting verdicts, which at the same time undermines the judiciary itself, has entered a new stage.