• Home
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Lists
    • Yearly Top Tens
    • Trailers
    • Contact
    • Hire Me
    • About
Menu

World of Reel

Street Address
City, State, Zip
Phone Number
Home
Martin Scorsese to Direct ‘Midnight Vendetta’ — Tackles 1890 Mafia in New Orleans
IMG_5592.jpg
‘Lilo & Stitch’ Earns Insane $180M Memorial Day Weekend
IMG_5589.jpg
Guy Ritchie’s ‘Fountain of Youth’ Faces Critical Wrath Despite Star-Studded Cast and $200M Budget
IMG_5586.jpg
Łukasz Żal to DP Pawel Pawlikowski’s ‘Fatherland’— Shooting This Summer
IMG_5584.jpg
Cannes 2025 Postmortem
Featured
Capture.PNG
Aug 19, 2019
3-Hour ‘Midsommar' Director's Cut Screened in NYC
Aug 19, 2019

This year’s 12th edition of the Scary Movies festival at Film at Lincoln Center premiered Ari Aster’s extended version of “Midsommar” this past Saturday.

Aug 19, 2019

World of Reel

  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Lists
  • More
    • Yearly Top Tens
    • Trailers
  • About
    • Contact
    • Hire Me
    • About

Iranian Authorities Sentence ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig' Director to 8 Years in Prison and Flogging

May 8, 2024 Jordan Ruimy

UPDATE: Iran strikes again. It turns out that they’ve decided to sentence Rasoulof to eight years in prison and flogging.

We also now know what “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is about. The plot tackles a judge for the Revolutionary Court in Tehran dealing with the fallout of nationwide protests. This is obviously a highly political film, and the fact that Rasoulof managed to even direct it in Iran is something of a miracle.

It's possible that Iranian authorities have sentenced Rasoulof in such harsh fashion as a way to convince him pull his film out of Cannes competition, which is what they’ve demanded for a few weeks now.

EARLIER: Last month, Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” had been selected for Cannes Competition. However, producers of the film have now been interrogated by Iranian authorities and banned from leaving the country.

Lawyer Babak Paknia confirmed the news on X, stating that the film crew, after “enduring hours of interrogation,” were pressured to convince Rasoulof to withdraw the film from the Cannes line-up.

Some of the production agents of the movie "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" were summoned by the authorities during the last week and this week and were interrogated. Some of the film's actors have been banned from leaving, and according to their statements, after several hours of interrogation, they were asked to ask the director to remove the film from the Cannes Festival.

It is unclear whether Mohammad Rasoulof, who has been banned from leaving Iran since 2017, and has an upcoming case in the Revolutionary Court, can travel to Cannes to attend the premiere of his own film.

The plot of “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” and its cast, remain under wraps.

Rasoulof won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2020 for his anti-capital punishment film “There Is No Evil” He was detained in 2022 for sharing comments denouncing the government crackdown on the nationwide protests. He was temporarily released in 2023 due to health concerns and was later pardoned and sentenced to one year of penal servitude, as well as a two-year ban from leaving Iran on the charge of “propaganda against the regime.”

Last year, Rasoulof was asked to join the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury but could not attend due to these imposed travel restrictions.

← Isabelle Huppert to Head Venice Film Festival Jury ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' is Good, But Lacks Darkly Ambitious Nature of Previous Films [Review] →

FOLLOW US!


Trending

Featured
IMG_5403.jpg
Ari Aster’s ‘Eddington’ POLARIZES; Starts as Satire, Ends in Horror — Not Everyone’s Buying It [Cannes]
IMG_5383.jpg
‘Sirat’ Screens — Surreal, Chaotic and Unsettling [Cannes]
IMG_5352.jpg
‘Mission: Impossible 8’ Review Embargo Breaks — It’s A Mess [Cannes]
IMG_5328.jpg
‘Sound of Falling’ Gets Bogged Down by Heavy Symbolism [Cannes]
IMG_4571.jpg
David Fincher & Brad Pitt Reunite for ‘The Continuing Adventures of Cliff Booth' + Plot Details

Critics Polls

Featured
Capture.PNG
Critics Poll: ‘Vertigo’ Named Best Film of the 1950s, Over 120 Participants
B16BAC21-5652-44F6-9E83-A1A5C5DF61D7.jpeg
Critics Poll: Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ Tops Our 1960s Critics Poll
Capture.PNG
Critics Poll: ‘The Godfather’ Named Best Movie of the 1970s
public.jpeg
Critics Poll: ‘Do the Right Thing' Named Best Movie of the 1980s
Critics Poll: ‘Mulholland Drive' Named Best Film of the 2000s
g4.jpg
Critics' Poll: ‘Goodfellas' Named Best Movie of the 1990s
Critics Poll: ‘Mad Max: Fury Road' Named Best Movie of the 2010s
World of Reel tagline.PNG
 

Content

Contribute

Hire me

 

Support

Advertise

Donate

 

About

Team

Contact

Privacy Policy

Site designed by Jordan Ruimy © 2023