Take Action for Our Friends in Iran!

The ICFR calls on the global film community to stand in solidarity with our colleagues in Iran, and on governments worldwide to provide all those fleeing the violence with a safe haven

The ICFR stands in unwavering solidarity with the filmmaking community in Iran and supports the calls of IIFMA, PEN America, Artists at Risk Connection, and the global film community, demanding the immediate release of our detained colleagues and the cessation of arbitrary killings, the use of extreme force, and the persecution of those practicing their core right of freedom of expression.

We look with profound dread at what humanity stands to lose when the future of Iranian cinema is killed on the very streets the world first came to care for through the country’s cinema. We acknowledge the tens of artists who have been killed during this period of unrest, including the filmmaker Javad Ganji, whose death is a profound loss to his family, his colleagues, and the artistic community in Iran. They are among the thousands of civilians, artists, journalists and others reportedly murdered by the Iranian regime's brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests around the country.

Furthermore, we are alarmed by the ongoing detention of tens of artists, including filmmakers currently held by the state, including (per IIFMA's reporting) six of our film colleagues whose names we are permitted to include here:

• Dawood Abbasi, filmmaker;
• Nasrdin Bagherzadeh, actress;
• Melika Malek Mohammadi, assistant director;
• Ghazal Shahi, actress;
• Ghazale Vakili, filmmaker;
• Navid Zarehbin, filmmaker.

This deprivation of liberty lacks any semblance of transparency or due process, leaving ample grounds for grave concerns regarding their safety and physical integrity. This violence is deepened by a systematic effort to dismantle the professional lives of those who remain.

In spite of the Iranian regime's nationwide internet shutdown, we are receiving disconcerting reports on the use of gruelling interrogation and confiscation of property and equipment, as well as continuous threats of imprisonment, as a tool for political pressure. These tactics are being used against a wide range of Iranian filmmakers, including Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam whom the ICFR has been actively campaigning for in recent years. To seize a filmmaker’s tools or their personal property is a deliberate attempt to strip a community of its voice and its capacity to function.

We demand that governments allow safe haven to those Iranian filmmakers who want and need it, and we urge them to spare no effort in the use of diplomacy to help save lives that will shape a better future.

We call on the international film community to raise their voice and stand with our colleagues in Iran—with their demands, and with their dreams of a different, free, and peaceful future. We encourage them to take action by sharing this call via their networks, as well as by signing/sharing the petition already undersigned by thousands of film workers and institutions across our global community.

Iranian filmmakers will never be alone.

The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk