Iranian Film Director Cannot Accept Cannes Jury Role Due To Flight Ban
Dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof cannot participate in the Cannes Film Festival as he is barred from leaving Iran.
Dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof cannot participate in the Cannes Film Festival as he is barred from leaving Iran.
The Iranian film legend was due to be on the festival’s Un Certain Regard jury but along with scores of other celebrities and sports stars, is subject to a travel ban.
Other punishments levied by the regime to celebrities include bank account freezes and communications bans.
Rasoulof was temporarily released from Evin prison in February due to health issues, offering hope that he could attend the prestigious French film festival as a jury member.
However, when the festival announced the names of the jury members on Wednesday, Mohammad Rasoulof’s name could not be seen.
He has been under house arrest since 2017 when his film "A Man of Integrity" won the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section.
Due to his anti-regime content, he was given six years in prison in 2010 that was reduced to a year on appeal, and he was also banned from making films for 20 years.
He defied the ban and went on to make his drama There Is No Evil, capturing Iranian society under the Islamic Republic regime, which won the Berlinale Golden Bear in 2020.
Rasoulof and his colleague Mostafa Al-e Ahmad were arrested in July 2022 after signing an appeal along with dozens of other filmmakers and film industry workers. The appeal called on security forces to “lay down” their weapons.
Media in Tehran and other cities are reporting dozens of similar cases as no one actually knows how much the annual inflation rate is after the government stopped publishing its monthly statistics.
Aftab News, a website which dares to be more critical of the authoritarian regime, quipped Wednesday that President Ebrahim Raisi still insists, “The progress by Iran has angered the enemies,” meaning the United States and its allies.
Mehr News Agency, a conservative website and a supporter of Iran’s hardliners reported that families share rented apartments, as they cannot afford the soaring security deposit and monthly rent.
Others simply must move to cheaper and cheaper areas, getting farther than the cities and have to commute somehow if they do not own a car. Vehicles have also become unaffordable for many with the cheapest options costing billions of rials.
Ordinary Iranian salaries are less than $200 a month, while rents for simple apartments have soared to beyond $300. Couples must work two jobs just to pay the rent.
Although Iranians have been losing their purchasing power since 2018 when their currency nosedived, the situation took a turn for the worse last September as the rial began to fall further, losing half its value. The US dollar rose from around 260,000 rials last August to near 550,000 in late April.
The minimum monthly income needed for bare necessities for a family of 3.3 people remains at around $500 a month, but the rials a family earns buys much less each week.
The political leadership, however, continues its nuclear program and its anti-West policies, so far refusing to compromise with the United States.
Even some real estate agents will soon be forced to go out of business as they cannot sell properties overpriced for the impoverished population. Some agencies close just one deal a month and cannot even afford rent for their own office.
Etemad newspaper reported that people who just a few months ago were helping others in need are now unable to afford their own groceries. Prices for eggs, milk, meat and rice have doubled in less than a year.
“Until a few months ago there were upper middle-class people who were quietly leaving some money with neighborhood stores so that they could give out food to needy customers who were asking to buy things on credit,” Etemad wrote, “but in the last 6-7 months these philanthropists have disappeared.”
One such person who went to the butcher to pay the debts of those who could not pay, realized that most people were buying only chicken skin and bones, the newspaper reported.
One kilogram of chicken fillet now costs 1.8 million rials, while an ordinary salary is around 70,000 rials. A few months ago, the same chicken meat was sold at 630,000 rials. Now, people are forced to buy the cheaper parts, such as skin or stripped bones.
In poorer Tehran neighborhoods, even butchers are opting to close shop and start another business as far fewer people can afford beef or chicken.
Desperate people try to barter homemade jams or pickles for protein foods.
As million of people are becoming impoverished, Aftab News quotes psychologists and doctors about the damage inflicted by malnutrition on children and adults alike. While mothers have to breastfeed babies with intake of nutritious food, adults face more health problems, such as cancer, that many say has spiked in recent years.
