Award-successful Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof suggests he has fled the place following acquiring a jail sentence for making his hottest film in secret.

In an Instagram article, he explained he was in a “secure spot” just after people “risked their life” to support him cross borders.

His movie The Seed of the Sacred Fig is to be premiered at the Cannes competition, which opens on Tuesday.

Rasoulof gained the prime prize at the 2020 Berlin Pageant with There Is No Evil, a movie about the loss of life penalty in Iran.

“I am grateful to my mates, acquaintances, and persons who kindly, selflessly, and occasionally by risking their life, aided me get out of the border and attain a security immediately after a tricky and extensive journey,” he wrote in his submit on Monday.

His attorney Babak Paknia informed AFP news agency: “I can confirm that Mohammad Rasoulof has still left Iran and will show up at the Cannes pageant.”

The Iranian authorities experienced attempted to pressure him to ask organisers to withdraw The Seed of the Sacred Fig from the function, but he refused to do so.

Rasoulof, 51, gave no specifics about his escape route. He also posted a video of a snow-coated mountain, suggesting that he crossed the border possibly into Iraq or Turkey with the enable of smugglers.

Final week a court docket sentenced him to eight many years in jail on prices of “collusion towards countrywide protection”.

In his assertion posted on Instagram, he stated: “The scope and intensity of repression has achieved a point of brutality wherever individuals count on news of an additional heinous government crime each and every day.”

Rasoulof has regularly run afoul of Iran’s Islamic courts. In 2019 he was sentenced to a year in jail more than his movie A Gentleman of Integrity, which received a prize at the 2017 Cannes competition.

Just after There is no Evil in 2020, the director was convicted of anti-federal government propaganda and presented a further a person-year sentence.