Dissident Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof will attend Friday’s Cannes screening of his competitors film The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
Rasoulof introduced final week that he had left Iran and was staying in what he described as an “undisclosed location in Europe” in a press release shared with the worldwide press.
Rasoulof’s reps confirmed to Deadline that he’ll attend the screening on Friday.
Information of Rasoulof’s journey to Europe got here per week after his lawyer confirmed that Iranian authorities had handed the filmmaker an eight-year jail sentence for “signing statements and making movies and documentaries.” Days after the sentence was introduced, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig was handed a contest spot at Cannes.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig is about an investigating decide in Tehran who grapples with paranoia as nationwide political protests intensify and his gun mysteriously disappears.
Rasoulof has been within the crosshairs of Iran’s hardline Islamic Republic authorities all through his profession for difficult its authoritarian rule. In his newest brush with Iran’s hardline regime, he was arrested in July 2022 for signing a petition titled “Lay Down Your Arms” calling on safety forces to train restraint in relation to fashionable protests.
He was launched on a short lived foundation in February 2023 from Tehran’s Evin jail resulting from unwell well being and has been beneath home arrest ever since. Final 12 months, he was invited to serve on the Cannes Un Sure Regard Jury however was unable to just accept the invitation after being barred from leaving Iran.
One among Iran’s most distinguished administrators, Rasoulof has an extended relationship with Cannes. His movies Manuscripts Don’t Burn (2013) and A Man Of Integrity (2017) world premiered in Un Sure Regard in 2013 and 2017, successful the Fipresci Prize and finest movie prize respectively.