DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran has released an award-winning filmmaker more than six months after he was arrested for criticizing the government, a reform-minded daily reported Monday.
Mohammad Rasoulof, whose 2020 film ‘There Is No Evil’ won top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, was among a number of entertainers, athletes and other celebrities arrested in recent months for criticizing the authorities.
He was arrested in July for criticizing the government’s crackdown on protests in the southwestern town of Abadan following a building collapse, which killed several people. Nationwide protests erupted two months later when a 22-year-old woman died while in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
The Shargh daily, associated with the country’s reform movement, said Rasoulof had recently been released from prison and officially released. The media did not specify the dates or give more information. Authorities did not comment.
Iran this month released well-known Iranian director Jafar Panahi, arrested in July after investigating the arrest of Rasoulof and another colleague. Authorities also released on bail Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti, who had been arrested for criticizing the crackdown on recent protests.
Iranians took to the streets to denounce the September death of Masha Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman who had been arrested by morality police for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code. The protests have escalated to include calls for the ousting of Iran’s ruling clerics, in one of the biggest challenges they have faced since seizing power in the 1979 revolution.
At least 529 protesters have been killed and nearly 20,000 detained since the protests began, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has been following the unrest closely. Iranian authorities have not released official figures for deaths or arrests.
‘There Is No Harm’, which tells four stories related to the use of the death penalty in Iran, won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2020. Rasoulof did not come to collect the prize because the Iranian authorities had forbidden him to travel.