Acclaimed director Jafar Panahi has become the third Iranian filmmaker to be arrested in the country in less than a week.
Panahi, 62, who won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2015 for his film "Taxi," was arrested in Tehran on Monday when he went to the prosecutor's office to check on filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran's semi-official news agency Mehr reported.
Rasoulof, a fellow Golden Bear winner in 2020 for "There Is No Evil," and his colleague Mostafa Aleahmad were arrested last Friday, accused of attempting to "inflame and disrupt the psychological safety of the community," according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.
Reuters, citing the IRNA state news agency, reported that the pair were among a group of filmmakers who had signed a letter calling on the security forces to lay down their weapons during protests that followed the deadly collapse of a 10-story building in the city of Abadan on May 23.
Human Rights Watch said the arrests were part of a "crackdown ... on peaceful dissent amid the deterioration of economic conditions and what appears to be a deadlock in reviving the international community's nuclear deal with Iran."
HRW described Rasoulof as an outspoken critic who was previously sentenced in an Iranian court to "one year in prison and a two-year ban on making films on the charge of 'propaganda against the system' for the content of his movies."
The filmmakers' arrests have drawn international condemnation.
On Monday, the Cannes Film Festival issued a statement demanding "the immediate release" of Panahi and of Rasoulof and Aleahmad, who it said were "protesting against violence against civilians in Iran."
"The Festival de Cannes strongly condemns these arrests as well as the wave of repression obviously in progress in Iran against its artists," it said.
Panahi's film "3 Faces" won best screenplay at Cannes in 2018; Rasoulof's work has won multiple awards at the festival since 2011.