Films by two convicted Iranian directors, Jafar Panahi and Moha-mmed Rasoulof, made in “semi-clandestine conditions”, will be shown at May’s Cannes film festival, organisers said on Saturday.
Panahi’s In Film Nist (This is not a Film), will be included in the official selection and screened on May 20, a statement said. Rasoulof’s Be Omid e Didar (Goodbye) will be shown on May 14 in the parallel Un Certain Regard section of the festival.
The organisers said the two films had only reached the festival “in recent days.”
“Mohammed Rasoulof’s film and the conditions under which it was made, Jafar Panahi’s ‘diary’ of the days of his life as an artist not allowed to work, are by their very existence a resistance to the legal action which affects them,” said the statement. “That they send them to Cannes, at the same time, the same year, when they face the same fate, is an act of courage along with an incredible artistic message.”
“The reality of being alive and the dream of keeping cinema alive motivated us to go through the existing limitations in Iranian cinema,” the organisers quoted a letter from Panahi. —AFP