Earlier this week, a prominent Iranian filmmaker, Mohammad Nourizad, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for “insulting” Iran’s leaders in the aftermath of last June’s presidential election. He is hardly the first filmmaker to get in trouble with the regime; today, artists like Nourizad are at the center of Iran’s internal struggle. For 31 years, social commentary under the Islamic Republic of Iran has become increasingly politicized. With the regime viewing the enforcement of strict religious values as one of its fundamental goals, the line between personal expression and criticism of the government has become blurred. Censors from the country’s Ministry of Culture have clamped down, but filmmakers have also pushed back, using their work to test the regime’s limits. Some, such as Jafar Panahi, have been thrown in jail, while others, such as Mohsen Makhmalbaf, have chosen exile.
That’s what happened to another of Nourizad’s peers — Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi. After leaving Tehran for the Cannes Film Festival in April 2009, Ghobadi decided it was just too risky to return home. After years of filming in Iran, Ghobadi has now joined the ranks of fellow filmmakers abroad, splitting his ti… >>>
