Mahnaz Mohammadi, Iranian women's rights activist and filmmaker arrested in notorious Evin prison (Via Anna Julia Müller-Funk) On Saturday, June 7, 2014, the Iranian women's rights activist and filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi was again arrested.
She has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison for "endangering national security" and "propaganda against the Iranian regime." She has been advocating for (women’s) human rights in Iran for over 15 years. Beside others she played a leading role in the "One Million Signatures Campaign," which aimed to abolish Iranian laws that discriminated against women. Mahnaz Mohammadi has contributed to numerous films as a director, producer and actress.
Her films "Travelogue" (2006) and "Women Without Shadows" (2003) were shown at various international film festivals. The former accompanies a train with Iranian refugees, that leaves from Tehran train station every Thursday to Istanbul and returns empty to Iran. In her award-winning work "Women Without Shadows" she portrays an Iranian facility for mentally ill women and its patients. Mahnaz Mohammadi has worked with a wide variety of well-known Iranian directors, among others Rakhshan Bani-E'temad. In their remarkable film "We are half of Iran's population" (2009), in which Mahnaz Mohammadi participated as the producer and assistant director, the demands of Iranian women’s rights activists are highlighted. In the film "Ephemeral Marriage" (directed by Reza Serkanian) that was shown in Cannes in May 2011 ) Mahnaz Mohammadi played the leading character. Her presence at the Cannes festival however was prevented by the Iranian regime by the confiscation of her passport.
In a message that was read to the audience Mahnaz Mohammadi describes her situation: "I am a woman and a filmmaker, two things that are sufficient to be treated like a criminal in this country." The film has been awarded with several prizes for its critical depiction of Iranian gender relations. Mahnaz Mohammadi has been arrested several times due to of their political and artistic activities; most recently in the summer of 2011, when she was detained for over a month in notorious Iranian Evin prison. After her release on bail on 28 June 2011, Mahnaz Mohammadi continued under close state observation by the intelligence, her passport was withheld by the court and the ban to work as a filmmaker remained upright since 2009. Her heath has severely deteriorated during her last detention.
In 2011 she was eventually released, also due to international pressure. Previously, she was imprisoned in 2007 and 2009; in 2009, together with the internationally renowned, prosecuted and convicted Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and Rokhsareh Ghaem-Maghami, as well as a number of other human rights defenders, which commemorated the killing of demonstrators during the protests in 2009 on a Tehran cemetery. In the previous years her home was repeatedly searched by intelligence, personal items, work equipment and film material were confiscated regularly.
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