Iranian directors of My Favourite Cake given suspended jail sentences for ‘spreading lies’

An Iranian court has handed two Iranian film directors suspended jail terms over a film that angered authorities in its home country but was acclaimed in Europe and the US, rights groups said on Thursday.

Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha were convicted earlier this week by a revolutionary court for their film My Favourite Cake, the Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) and Dadban legal monitor said in separate statements. The film, which competed at the 2024 Berlin film festival and won prizes in Europe and the US, shows the romantic awakening of a woman in Tehran who notably appears without the headscarf that is obligatory for women in Iran.

The pair were sentenced to 14 months in prison, suspended for five years, and a fine on charges of “spreading lies with the intention of disturbing public opinion”, Dadban said. In addition, they were sentenced to one year in prison, also suspended for five years, and all equipment ordered confiscated for the charge of “participating in the production of vulgar content”. Another fine was ordered on the charge of “showing a film without a screening licence”, it added.

The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran commented on the verdict, saying: “Artists in Iran endure significant hardships, including increasing censorship, arbitrary detentions and the constant threat of legal repercussions for expressing dissent through their work.”

Even before their conviction, Moghaddam and Sanaeeha were banned from leaving Iran to attend the Berlin film festival and then promote the film when it was released in Europe. “We wanted to tell the story of the reality of our lives, which is about those forbidden things like singing, dancing, not wearing hijab at home, which no one does at home,” Moghaddam said earlier this year.

News of the verdict came as the Cannes film festival announced that the new movie by another leading director banned from leaving Iran, Jafar Panahi, would be screened at its 2025 edition. Another recent Iranian film, Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which explicitly deals with the 2022-23 protest movement, resulted in the director and several of its actors fleeing the country, and those who remained unable to leave and subject to prosecution.