Director Mohammad Rasoulof, sentenced to prison and flogging, flees Iran ahead of Cannes
- Mohammad Rasoulof says he fled to Europe after being sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran
- Rasoulof’s latest film, ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’, is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival
Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof said on Monday he had left Iran clandestinely after being sentenced to jail and flogging on national security charges, a day ahead of the opening of the Cannes Film Festival where his new film is in the main competition.
“I am grateful to my friends, acquaintances, and people who kindly, selflessly, and sometimes by risking their lives, helped me get out of the border and reach a safe place on the difficult and long path of this journey,” Rasoulof, whose film The Seed of the Sacred Fig is to premiere at Cannes, wrote on his official Instagram page.
Taking aim at the Islamic republic’s theocratic leaders, Rasoulof said he was joining millions of Iranians across the world in the exile of a “cultural Iran” outside a “geographical Iran” which “suffers under the boots of your religious tyranny”.
“They (Iranians in exile) are impatiently waiting to bury you and your system of oppression in the depths of history,” he wrote.
Rasoulof was sentenced by an Iranian court to eight years in jail, of which five were due to be served, on charges of “collusion against national security”, his lawyer Babak Paknia said last week. He was also sentenced to flogging.