“The Minister of Culture has personally ordered the end of the 13th edition of the Isfa Short Film Festival after using the image of a woman without a veil on its poster,” Iran’s official Irna News Agency reported on Saturday evening.
The festival was founded in 2008 by the Union Association of Iranian Short Film Directors (Isfa) and takes place in Tehran.
To present its next edition, which should have taken place in September, Isfa Festival had shown a photo of Iranian actress Susan Taslimi in the 1982 film “The Death of Yazdguerd”.
Four years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranian and foreign women, regardless of their religion, are required to wear a veil and loose clothing in public under a law that has been in place since 1983.
In mid-July, the national police announced that they had resumed patrols to punish women, a growing number of whom, for not wearing a veil in public places.
The judiciary also said on Saturday evening that it had prosecuted employees of a large e-commerce company who published photos of them naked.
On July 19, Iranian actress Afsaneh Bayegan was given a two-year suspended sentence for appearing at a film event without the veil being required.
A protest movement erupted across the country following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman who was arrested by morality police in September 2022 and accused of violating the strict dress code for women.
Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, were killed and thousands arrested during the autumn demonstrations.