Iranian filmmaker Keywan Karimi will go to prison for six years and earn 223 lashes for the simple crime of pursuing the seventh art.
“Watch my movies and ... (then) judge me,” Karimi told an Associated Press journalist after being sentenced for “insulting sanctities”.
He has appealed against his sentence and will remain out of prison until the appeal is heard. “I speak about the government, I speak about society, I speak about (graffiti), I speak about a labourer,” Karimi added.
Karimi was sentenced for a video clip deemed provocative and for portions of his documentary Writing on the City, which explores political graffiti in Iran. His 2013 short film The Adventure of the Married Couple, based on the Italo Calvino story of the same name, is about a married couple who barely meet each because they work different shifts. The story also inspired Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s dialogue-free 2014 movie Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of Love).
Karimi joins the ranks of such persecuted artists as Jafar Panahi, who has had a long history of clashing with the Iranian censors, and was accused in 2010 of creating “propaganda” against the regime. Panahi was handed down the equivalent of a death sentence for a filmmaker: a six-year jail term, a 20-year ban on directing movies, writing screenplays, giving interviews to Iranian or foreign media, and leaving the country except for medical treatment or making the Hajj pilgrimage.
Panahi’s powerful dramas, including The Circle, Crimson Gold and Offside, have been feted by film festivals the world over, and the gutsy filmmaker used the festival platform to mount an astounding act of subversion. Collaborator Kambuzia Partovi filmed Panahi pottering about in his apartment, playing with his pet iguana Iggy, and thinking out loud about his future projects. The document of defiance was titled This is Not a Film. It was famously smuggled out of Iran on a pen drive and shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011.
Panahi continues to make movies while appealing his sentence. Closed Curtain, from 2013, is yet another semi-autobiographical movie about a writer, played by Partovi, who hides out in his beachfront villa because he has committed the crime of having a dog. Canine ownership is severely restricted in Iran.
Panahi continues to strainat the leash. In his latest movie Taxi, he drove a vehicle around Tehran, recording his conversations with his passengers. Taxi won the Golden Bear, the highest honour, at the Berlin International Film Festival, and will be shown at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.
The cinema of Iran has given the world such indubitable talent as Panahi, Dariush Mehrjui, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi, and Asghar Farhadi. Some of these filmmakers continue to live and work in Iran, such as Kiarostami, Majidi and Farhadi.
Majidi’s biopic on the Prophet Muhammad, Muhammad: The Messenger of God, was released in Iran earlier this year, and is the country’s official pick for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Farhadi has stacked up fans on the festival circuit with such character studies as About Elly, A Separation and The Past.
The veterans of the Iranian New Wave, such as Mehrjui, Makhmalbaf and Kiarostami, have faced criticism or outright bans in their homeland. Makhmalbaf, whose best-known films include Gabbeh (1996), A Moment of Innocence (1996), The Silence (1997) and Kandahar (2001), left Iran in 2005 and now lives in Paris. At least five of his films were banned in Iran for several years.
Kiarostami continues to live in Tehran, but his recent movies have been set abroad. Certified Copy is in French, Italian and English and plays out in Tuscany, while Like Someone in Love is a Japanese movie set in Tokyo.