By Dewi Cooke
AN IRANIAN actor has been sentenced to one year in prison and 90 lashes for her starring role in Australian film My Tehran for Sale.
In an outcome that could have been lifted from the pages of the movie's script, Marzieh Vafamehr was arrested in July and received her sentence at the weekend, according to reports quoting Iranian opposition website kalameh.com.
The exact nature of the crime she was charged with is unclear and the Iranian embassy in Canberra did not respond to The Age's request for comment. Vafamehr often appears with a shaved head and no headscarf in the film, which also explores cultural oppression in Iran and taboos such as drug use.
One of the film's Australian producers, Kate Croser from Adelaide production house Cyan Films, confirmed the sentence. Neither the producers nor the film's Melbourne-based director, Iranian-Australian Granaz Moussavi, would comment because of Vafamehr's family's wishes to let the case follow the proper legal channels. Vafamehr will appeal her sentence.
Shot on the sly in Iran with a local crew in 2008, My Tehran for Sale is a fictional work. However, in a previous interview Moussavi said she also drew on her own experiences and those of the people she met as an interpreter at the Woomera Detention Centre for the film.
''I believe that when you do anything independent in Iran, … writing or making films, there is always the issue of getting criticised or negatively thought of,'' she told The Age in 2008.
The film focuses on ''Marzieh'' (played by Moussavi's childhood friend Marzieh Vafamehr), an actress struggling under her country's controls over artistic expression. The government has banned Marzieh's work, and her romance with an Iranian-Australian expat (Amir Chegini) leads her to consider life outside Iran.
The film also deals with the secret lives of Iran's youth and, in one poignant scene, young people arrested at an underground dance party await their punishment as the sound of a cracking whip is heard in the background.
The film has never officially screened in Iran but had its Australian debut at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2009. Its international debut was at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Moussavi toured the film around the country last year as part of the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival. The film's makers won an Independent Spirit award at the Inside Film Awards in 2009.
Human Rights Film Festival director Matt Benetti said news of Vafamehr's arrest was a shock.
''It just hits home much more,'' he said. ''Iran in particular seems to censor a lot of the artworks of a political nature and I just think it's really important it gets out.''
Katrina Sedgwick, director of the Adelaide Film Festival, described news of Vafamehr's arrest as ''surreal''. The festival had helped Moussavi develop the film and contributed about $125,000 to its production.
The film is due to be shown as part of an Amnesty International women's rights film festival later this year.
Amnesty International Middle East and North African spokesman James Lynch said film industry workers were the latest group to be targeted by Iranian authorities and described Vafamehr's sentence of flogging as ''cruel, inhuman and degrading''.[The Sydney Morning Herald]
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