For good measure, law enforcement agents reportedly harassed numerous other filmmakers, seizing their communications equipment.
Security forces have attacked and killed an unknown number of demonstrators in the course of months of protests.
Keshavarz, as noted above, was among the directors arrested last year.
Wim Wenders and Afsun Moshiry (rt) at CPH:DOX in CopenhagenCourtesy of Karoline Hill, CPH:DOX
Wenders expounded on why cinema is perceived as such a threat by an authoritarian regime like Irans.
The idea of change is immanent to filmmaking, I think, and to movies, Wenders told Deadline.
Only utterly commercial films present a world that should stay the way it is.
A person holds a copy of Iranian magazine Andisheh reporting on the death of Mahsa Amini.Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images
Only the most commercial filmmaking isnotpromoting the idea of change.
Any independent filmmaking… as such, is promoting change.
And that of course is dangerous for any regime that doesnt really like change.
So many [other] musicians had gone to Mexico, Spain, Florida, whatever.
And these guys were there.
So, we just didnt do that.
Wenders said thats true of some of the six films chosen for A Sense of Place.
Its a very political film, but probably under the radar of the danger zones that the regime sees.
She described the current situation in Iran, amidst the crackdown on protests, as quite hard.
And I think that now, right now, its very emotional for us.
Its like very hard to also see the images from outside.
She added she feels solidarity with the whole of the Iranian people.
We make a run at support everyone in the country.
And we want also to do our utmost for the filmmakers and artists.
They really need much support these days, in every sense.
We have an Iranian producer…
The DoPs and the editors were all Iranians.
So, these were little things that we thought about.
