MUMBAI: Sentenced to a year in jail and 90 lashes for starring in the Australian production My Tehran for Sale, Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr has been released from prison without suffering the lashes and further imprisonment.
Her imprisonment was reduced to three months while the flogging sentence overruled by an Appeal Court, according to Amnesty International, Cyan Films, the South Australian Film Corporation and the Adelaide Film Festival.
Shot entirely in Tehran, My Tehran for Sale stars Vafamehr as a stage actress who plots to flee Iran with the help of a man she meets at an underground rave. Banned in Iran, the movie was distributed illegally in the country and premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. Vafamehr was initially arrested in July and was released later that month after posting unspecified bail.
Just a last week, it was reported that a Tehran appeals court upheld the six-year jail sentence and 20-year filmmaking ban against director Ja‘far Panahi while his fellow Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof was also sentenced to six years imprisonment in a separate case and also remains under house arrest.
