In 2010, Rasoulof was arrested on set and accused of filming without a permit. He was sentenced to six years in prison, later reduced to one year. In September 2017 his passport was confiscated upon his return to Iran, meaning he became ''mamnu'-ol-xoruğ'' (), i.e. banned from leaving the country. Furthermore, he was ordered to attend a court hearing. On 23 July 2019, Rasoulof was convicted by the
Islamic Revolutionary Court of Iran to one-year imprisonment and a two-year ban on leaving the country and on participation in social and political activity because of his film
A Man of Integrity. He is accused of "gathering and collusion against national security and of propaganda against the system". In August 2019 Rasoulof appealed the verdict. On his way to the court, in an act of professional solidarity, he and his lawyer were accompanied by some of the most renowned Iranian filmmakers, including
Kianoush Ayyari,
Majid Barzegar,
Reza Dormishian,
Asghar Farhadi,
Bahman Farmanara,
Rakhshān Banietemad,
Fatemeh Motamed-Arya,
Jafar Panahi, and
Hasan Pourshirazi. On 4 March 2020, Rasoulof was sentenced to one year in prison for three of his movies, which were considered "propaganda against the system". The verdict also included a ban on making films for two years. He stated that he intends to appeal the decision and will not turn himself in, considering the ongoing
coronavirus pandemic, which had already led Iran to release 54,000 prisoners temporarily in order to prevent the virus from spreading. Rasoulof was originally scheduled to take part in the
2023 Cannes Film Festival as a jury member of the
Un Certain Regard section. However, he with
Mostafa Aleahmad was arrested in July 2022 after criticising the government's crackdown on protestors in the southwestern city of Abadan over a
deadly building collapse. He was temporarily released from prison in February 2023 due to his health. Rasoulof was later pardoned and sentenced to a year in prison and a two-year ban on leaving Iran for "propaganda against the regime." Following the announcement that his film
The Seed of the Sacred Fig was selected in the main competition at the
2024 Cannes Film Festival, the cast and crew were interrogated by Iranian authorities, banned from leaving the country, and pressured to convince Rasoulof to withdraw the film from the festival line-up. On 8 May 2024, Rasoulof's lawyer announced that the director has been sentenced to eight years in prison as well as flogging, a fine and confiscation of his property. Shortly after, Rasoulof, and some crew members, managed to flee from Iran. While appealing his sentence, Rasoulof planned his "exhausting, long, complicated, and anguishing journey" out of Iran, which took a total of 28 days. He traveled on foot for several hours with a guide to a village at the border on the Iranian side, where he waited for the appropriate time to cross. He was transferred to a
safe house in a village on the non-Iranian side, where he waited for an extended period of time. He was then moved to a town with a German consulate. His passport had been seized by Iranian authorities, so he had no documents to identify himself. However, Rasoulof previously lived in Germany so he contacted the German authorities, who were able to identify him using his fingerprints and issued him a temporary travel document which he used to travel to Germany. On 24 May 2024, he attended the red carpet in Cannes, where later he received a Special Award for his film. In January 2026, he posted along with
Jafar Panahi a statement regarding the
protests and
massacres in Iran. The statement addressed also the
internet blackout in Iran: “On the one hand, the Iranian regime has cut off communication routes inside the country – the internet, mobile phones, and landlines – severing people’s ability to communicate with one another; and on the other hand, it has completely blocked all means of contact with the outside world". On 28 January 2026, Rasoulof, along with several other Iranian intellectuals, including
Amirsalar Davoudi,
Hatam Ghaderi,
Abolfazl Ghadyani,
Mehdi Mahmoudian,
Abdollah Momeni,
Mohammad Najafi,
Jafar Panahi,
Nasrin Sotoudeh, and
Sedigheh Vasmaghi, and the
Narges Mohammadi Human Rights Foundation, published a statement on
Instagram asserting that the
2026 Iran massacres were a
crime against humanity, accusing
Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei of holding principal responsibility. ==Filmography==