Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustaee has been sentenced to six months in prison in Iran after presenting his latest film Leila’s Brothers at the Cannes Festival and being accused of propaganda against the Iranian regime. The organization of the festival rated the act this Wednesday as a “serious violation of freedom of expression”. The famous director Martin Scorsese also supported the petition against Roustaee’s imprisonment: “Please sign this petition to bring Saeed justice,” Scorsese wrote on the social network Instagram, referring to an international campaign to collect signatures for his acquittal.
Roustaee, a 34-year-old director best known for films like 2021’s The Law of Tehran, a detective story about the drug business and its oppression by the Iranian state, has submitted Leia’s brothers to the 2022 Cannes Official Competition. The film tells the story film about a poor family in an Iran on the brink of collapse, against the backdrop of a deep economic crisis, international sanctions and social protests, and cinematographically received the International Press Federation Jury Prize in May 2022. He was subsequently awarded in this Country banned for “breaking the rules by attending Cannes and then the Munich Festival without permission (…)”. Tehran’s Revolutionary Court has sentenced Roustaee and the film’s producer, Javad Norouzbeigui, to six months in prison for “contributing to opposition propaganda against the Islamic system”.
A frame from “Leila’s Family”
“Like many professionals around the world, the Cannes Festival expresses its support for all those who suffer violence and oppression for the reception and dissemination of their works,” the organization said. According to the reform-leaning Iranian newspaper Etemad, the court ruled that the filmmakers will serve only one-twentieth of their sentences, nine days, while the rest “will be suspended for five years,” a period during which they will not be able to ” Carry out activities related to crimes committed or communicate with people working in the cinema sector”. They were also given 20 days to appeal the verdict. Despite everything, the country has a thriving film industry, in which personalities such as Yafar Panahi or Asghar Farhadi, winners from all over the world, are shown.
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