Sept — IRI Arrests Filmmakers for Alleged Ties to BBC

Several people who sold work to the BBC were summoned and arrested in September 2011. Six arrested were Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, co-director of banned film-maker Jafar Panahi’s latest film, Nasser Saffarian, Hadi Afariden, Shahnama Bazdar, Katayoun Shahabi and Mohsen Shahnazdar

“Iranian documentary film-makers are not allowed to sell their films to channels hostile to the Islamic Republic,” a ministry official in charge of supervising cinematic work quoted by the Fars news agency in September 2011.

The House of Cinema issued a letter of protest stating, “…there was no law to prohibit the sale of film to foreign television.”