24 November 2016

Iranian filmmaker starts sentence

Iranian filmmaker Keywan Karimi, sentenced to 223 lashes and a year in jail for a film he made about graffiti, started his prison sentence in Tehran on Wednesday, his French producer said.

Karimi, 31, a Sunni Muslim from Shiite Iran's Kurdish minority, ran into trouble with the powerful Revolutionary Guards over his documentary "Writing on the City".

The film details the history of scrawlings on Tehran's walls dating back to the Islamic revolution of 1979, through to the opposition Green Movement of the contested 2009 presidential election. [Your Middle East] Read more