A group of 200 filmmakers has sent an open letter to President Hassan Rouhani and the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Abbas Salehi, demanding “an end to the current guidelines that require filmmakers to obtain a permit before starting a project, and enables the government to censor the subject matter and the content of a film or ban its release.”
Citing Article 3 of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution, the signatories to the letter have called on senior government officials to stop their “condescending and patronizing behavior towards filmmakers, and instead nurture, foster and develop the country’s precious human and creative resources by allowing independent Iranian cinema to flourish without any government interference.”
[aesop_image img=”https://kayhanlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/cinema-niagara.jpg” panorama=”off” align=”center” lightbox=”on” caption=”Niagara Cinema, Iran. Source: Kayhan London” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]
The signatories to the letter include Naser Taghvaei, Behrouz Afkhami, Rakhshan Banietemad, Bijan Birang, Abolfazl Jalili, Mani Haghighi, Manijeh Hekmat, Leila Hatami, Mona Zandi-Haghighi, Alireza Raisian, Amir Shah Razavian, Farhad Varahram, Fatemeh Motamed-Arya, Dariush Mehrjui, Massoud Kimiai, Shahram Mokri, and Ali Mosaffa.
Translated from Persian by Fardine Hamidi
