The Turin Film Festival has launched an appeal for festivals around the world to take action against recent travel bans on Iranian artists by the country’s government.
Variety says director Babak Payami and Turin organizers are asking all international film events to officially invite as special guests Iranian filmmakers whose passports have been revoked amid political turmoil.
The trade magazine says Pluri-prize winning Iranian director, Jafar Panahi, was recently prevented from attending the Mumbai Film Festival. And, last month, popular actress Fatemeh Motamed-Arya and documentary filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb were barred from travelling to Los Angeles as guests of an Iranian film week organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The Turin fest, which kicked off Friday, has sent out its own invitations to these three artists.
“Jafar, Fatemeh and Mojtaba are denied their basic right of citizenship to travel when they wish. Their passports have been confiscated with no explanation or legal justification,” said the Iran-born and now Italy-based Payami. At a press conference, Payami also urged foreign embassies in Iran to express their outrage toward the travel ban to the Iranian cultural ministry.
Jafar Panahi — winner of the Cannes Golden Camera for ‘The White Balloon,’ among other prestigious awards — was arrested in July, along with his wife and daughter, at a Tehran cemetery where mourners had gathered to commemorate slain protesters of the contentious Iranian elections in June. The AFP said that mourners were marking the 40th day since the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman who came to symbolize the protest movement against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Panahi was briefly detained but allowed out of the country in September to head the jury of the Montreal Film Festival. There, he wore a green scarf, a symbol of anti-government protest, and authorities have since barred Panahi from traveling to Paris to talk to prospective producers, and from attending the Mumbai fest as a juror.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s cultural advisor Javad Shamaqdari says these foreign events fuel “the fever of their subversive activities.”
(Image: Jafar Panahi. Cines del Sur Granada Film Festival via Wikimedia Commons)
Story provided by the Dish Information Corporation