Iranian director facing jail for film attacking corruption
PARIS: It is not easy to lead a good and virtuous life in Iran if the filmmaker M. Rasoulof’s latest film, “A Man of Integrity,” is anything to go by.
Its downtrodden hero struggles to make an honest rial from his goldfish farm, caught in a nightmarish, distorting fish bowl of corruption at every turn.
The film, which won the prestigious Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes film festival in May, is a damning indictment of how the “daily reality of graft” is sapping Tehran.
“Corruption has penetrated every layer of society,” Rasoulof told AFP by Skype from his home in Tehran, where he is effectively under house arrest since his passport was confiscated when he returned from the Telluride film festival in the US in September.
The dark thriller tells the story of Reza, who refuses to pay a bribe for a loan that would save his business, and finds himself confronting a rotten array of officials and businessmen who run a small town in the north of the country.
“Corruption goes from the bottom of the social ladder right to the top of the pyramid of power,” said Rasoulof, whose earlier acclaimed films “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” and “Iron Island” were banned in his homeland.
“A Man of Integrity” is unlikely to see the light of day there either despite being praised by Variety and the Hollywood Reporter as a “compelling... tense, enraging drama.”
Rasoulof, 34, already has a suspended 12-month prison sentence hanging over his head after he was arrested on set in 2010 with his friend, the “Taxi” director Jafar Panahi, who was subsequently banned from making films for 20 years.
Initially jailed for six years, Rasoulof’s sentence was reduced on appeal.
This time he faces similar charges of “propaganda against the regime” and “endangering national security.”
But the threat of prison did not stop Rasoulof squaring up to the uncomfortable truth he insists is undermining the country from within.
Iranians are exhausted by graft, he said. “They want to leave it behind but they cannot, because corruption has become a system.
“This system forces you to be both corrupted, and a corrupter yourself. Even my friends are repulsed by it but cannot get away from it,” he added.