Iranian filmmaker Keywan Karimi arrested and jailed

Iranian filmmaker Keywan Karimi, 30, sentenced to 223 lashes and a year in prison for a film about graffiti in Tehran, was arrested and jailed Wednesday in his country, told AFP his French producer François Artemare.

"The independent Iranian filmmaker Keywan Karimi began Wednesday, November 23 to serve his sentence of one year in prison to Evin prison. He must also receive 223 lashes," said the production company of François d'Artemare Les films of the afternoon, in a statement.

Keywan Karimi, a Sunni Muslim from Iranian Kurdistan (west), was sentenced to six years in prison in October 2015 for "insult against sacred values" and "propaganda against the regime" in his documentary on political graffiti from the walls of Tehran "Write on the city."

His sentence was reduced to one year in prison and 223 lashes by a court of appeal in February 2016.

The young filmmaker had indicated to AFP that the sentence was "final", he would "accomplish" and had no "intention to quit" Iran. He said just hope to get a delay before being incarcerated.

His fate has touched many filmmakers across the world, including his compatriot Jafar Panahi , Golden Bear at Berlin in 2015 for his film "Taxi Tehran", also condemned him. In France, filmmakers and film professionals were mobilized to support and to ask his pardon at the last Cannes Festival.

First arrested in Iran in December 2013

"I do not want to be made a hero. Whether my films seen or my name to be known, is really secondary. The cinema is above all that gives meaning to my life", said in May Keywan Karimi in an interview with AFP. Keywan Karimi was first arrested in Iran in December 2013 after the broadcast of a trailer for his film "Writing on the city" on Youtube. He then spent 15 days in prison in solitary confinement in late 2013.

"Write on the city" describes the history of graffiti in the streets of Tehran in the 1979 revolution to the "green movement" that followed the Iranian presidential election of 2009.

Author also of short films, including "Broken Border" (2012), Keywan Karimi conducted in spring its first feature film, "Drum" .Projeté in a parallel section at the Venice Film Festival in September, "Drum" tells the story of a lawyer in Tehran whose life is turned upside down after a visit from a man who gave him a package.