The 51-year-old Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof was formally released from the notorious Evin prison in Tehran on Tuesday, his lawyer announced. Rasoulof was temporarily released for health reasons at the beginning of last month.
Mohammad Rasoulof was arrested together with his colleague Jafar Panahi (62) in July 2010 and sentenced to one year in prison the following year for ‘propaganda against the Islamic Republic’. Panahi, then the most famous Iranian dissident, received a six-year prison sentence, an exit ban and a twenty-year film ban – at the time he was working on a documentary about the failed re-election of the radical president Ahmadinejad and the wave of street protests that unleashed.
The regime let those prison sentences dangle over the filmmakers like a sword of Damocles. Rasoulof continued to make films that were banned in Iran itself but celebrated triumphs abroad. In 2020 he won the Golden Bear of the Berlinale with There’s no Evil, a four-part series about the death penalty – because of a travel ban, his producer and his daughter received the prize. Jafar Panahi secretly shoots films starring himself and also won a Golden Bear in 2015 for filming in a car Taxi Tehran. Panahis No Bears – in which he secretly directs a film from a border village – is now showing in Dutch cinemas.
Read also: How did you manage to make films in Iran despite censorship and restrictions?
Still arrested
In July last year, Rasoulof was arrested together with colleague Mostafa Al-Ahmad, this time for ‘incitement against the state’. The duo had called on Iranian security forces via social media for peaceful action in the restive city of Abadan, where protests had erupted over the collapse of a newly built residential tower. When Panahi pleaded for the duo to the public prosecutor, his sentence was also carried out. Two months later, a new wave of street protest followed, this time in response to the death of a 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police. These led to more than 500 deaths and tens of thousands of arrests.
It is unclear whether the releases should be seen as a charm offensive now that the street protest has died down somewhat. Filmmaker Jafar Panahi was released in early February when a judge overturned his sentence. Yet the Evin Prison only let Panahi go after two days of a dry hunger strike. Actress Taraneh Alidoosti was also released on bail. The Iranian star, who starred in the Oscar-winning film in 2016 The Salesmanwas lifted from bed in December after she spoke out for women’s rights and posed on Instagram without a headscarf.