Iran arrests 3rd outspoken filmmaker in escalating crackdown

Iran has arrested an internationally renowned filmmaker, several newspapers reported Tuesday, the third Iranian director to be locked up in less than a week as the government escalates a crackdown on the country’s celebrated cinema industry.

The arrest of award-winning director Jafar Panahi and wider pressure on filmmakers follows a wave of recent arrests as tensions escalate between Iran’s hard-line government and the West. Security forces have detained several foreigners and a prominent reformist politician as talks to revive Tehran’s nuclear accord with world powers hit a deadlock and fears grow over the country’s economic crisis.

Panahi, one of Iran’s best-known dissident filmmakers, had gone to the prosecutor’s office in Tehran on Monday evening to check on the cases of his two colleagues detained last week, when security forces scooped him up as well, the reports said.

A colleague of Panahi, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals, told