Following the don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass departure of Lars von Trier from the Cannes festival last week, support for his right to claim “I’m a Nazi” has come from an unlikely source – the government of Iran.
In a letter to Cannes festival president, Gilles Jacob, the Iranians called the festival’s claim to defend freedom of speech meaningless. In part, this was a response to the festival’s selection of two films by Iranian filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohamed Rasoulof, both jailed by the Ahmadinejad regime. Iran earlier accused the festival of only selecting the films to draw attention to the “dissidents”.
