What began last May at the Cannes Film Festival, La Cinémathèque Française (a French organization that preserves, restores and exhibits films and archives), and the Socéité des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD, a global screewriters’ society), has snowballed to include numerous other cultural and film organizations across the globe.
These filmmakers, actors, writers and more are asking the Islamic Republic to reevaluate the six-year prison sentence and 20-year ban on filmmaking and traveling given to Panahi and Rasoulov.
The petition says the “sentences are shameful, intolerable and unfitting for two film makers whose only ‘crime’ is to want to make films freely in their country.”
The leaders of the three organizations have requested a meeting with the Iranian ambassador in France so as to hand-deliver the 17,000 signatures.
Among those who have signed are: Francis Ford Coppola, Costa-Gavras, David Cronenberg, Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve, Atom Egoyan, Milos Forman, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Darius Khondji, Helen Mirren, Jeanne Moreau, Sean Penn, Rafi Pitts, Gus Van Sant and Marjane Satrapi.