![Iran has arrested three filmmakers in less than a week Iran has arrested three filmmakers in less than a week](https://morningtopnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/220712050359-jafar-panahi-super-tease-768x432.jpg)
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Panahi, 62, who won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2015 for his film “Taxi,” was arrested in Tehran on Monday when he went to the prosecutor’s office to check on filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran’s semi-official news agency Mehr reported.
Rasoulof, a fellow Golden Bear winner in 2020 for “There Is No Evil,” and his colleague Mostafa Aleahmad were arrested last Friday, accused of attempting to “inflame and disrupt the psychological safety of the community,” according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.
HRW described Rasoulof as an outspoken critic who was previously sentenced in an Iranian court to “one year in prison and a two-year ban on making films on the charge of ‘propaganda against the system’ for the content of his movies.”
The filmmakers’ arrests have drawn international condemnation.
On Monday, the Cannes Film Festival issued a statement demanding “the immediate release” of Panahi and of Rasoulof and Aleahmad, who it said were “protesting against violence against civilians in Iran.”
“The Festival de Cannes strongly condemns these arrests as well as the wave of repression obviously in progress in Iran against its artists,” it said.
Panahi’s film “3 Faces” won best screenplay at Cannes in 2018; Rasoulof’s work has won multiple awards at the festival since 2011.
‘Repressive reflex’
Separately, Iran’s former deputy interior minister, Mostafa Tajzadeh, was also arrested last Friday, accused of colluding against national security, and of “publishing lies to disturb public opinion,” according to Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency.
Tajzadeh, who briefly served under President Mohammad Khatami in 1998, has become an outspoken government critic, recently tweeting to his 350,000 followers that “according to the latest Stasis survey, 57% of Iranians” support the Iranian nuclear deal “and 17% are against it.”
CNN’s Sahar Akbarzai, Ramin Mostaghim, and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.
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