Winner of the golden bear in this year's Main Competition
Mohammad Rasoulof’s There is no Evil will be competing for the Silver Mirror Award in the Main Competition at this year’s festival.
It is with great pleasure that we announce that Iranian There is no Evil will be among the films competing for the Silver Mirror Award at Films from the South.
There is no Evil won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlinale earlier this year, where it also received the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Guild Film Prize.
Director Mohammad Rasoulof was inscribed in the history of the Films from the South Festival in 2017, when we presented three of his earlier films in our Directors Special Portrait section, among them A Man of Integrity, which had received the Best picture award in the Un Certain Regard-programme at the Cannes film festival the year before. However, Rasoulof’s planned visit to Oslo was blocked when he was arrested at the Teheran airport, due to his critical view of the Iranian government.
There is no Evil (2020)
In There is no Evil, Rasoulof continues voicing his disapproval of the Iranian clergy. The film presents four very different stories with one theme in common: the death penalty. Or rather, the painful question one can face as an involuntary executioner in an authoritarian regime: Would you take someone's life to spare your own? Rasoulof's stories challenge and engage, diving into the moral dilemmas created by the death penalty as an institution — not only in Iran, but also in a number of other societies where it is practiced.
The film is secured distribution in Norway through Filmpoolen, a collaboration between Films from the South, Bergen International Film Festival, Tromsø International Film Festival, NRK, as well as the film distributor Arthaus.
There is no Evil is set to premiere in Norwegian cinemas in early 2021.
– Arthaus is a proud distributor of Mohammad Rasoulof's new film There is no Evil in Norwegian cinemas, which deservedly won the Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale. Rasoulof, like his more famous compatriot Jafar Panahi (director of Taxi and 3 Faces), has come under fire from the authorities back home in Iran, but continues to make fiery film art at the highest international level, even though he is currently in house arrest and under a work ban, says Svend Jensen, managing director at Arthaus.