I'm weirdly seeing a reply to my comment that seems to be locked, somehow.
If I'm wrong about any of my facts, I'm happy to stand corrected. I got my information here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/azadeh-masihzadeh-no...

I'm not going to be so foolish as to state that I'm free of bias, implicit or otherwise, but within the article, the issue of lashes appeared to be brought up by her own lawyer. I assumed that could be taken at face value.

Regarding the public-domain status of the story, that's a separate issue from the director taking elements directly from his student's documentary, which I believe is at the heart of the suit. The story itself may be public domain, but the documentary's treatment of that story is not. If it were, any director could freely use any documentary as the basis for a fictionalized work without regards to the documentary's creator. Which seems problematic at best.

I'm gratified to see some justice in this case -- it's absolutely shameful that this man couldn't be bothered to give due credit to his own student for work that he clearly based on her project.

What's worse is that Farhadi sued Azadeh Masihzadeh for slander when she spoke up. She faced not only the possibility of jail time, but corporal punishment in the form of 70+ LASHES if the case had gone against her. Thankfully, the Iranian courts dismissed the slander charges and ruled in favor of the student filmmaker.

Five minutes to go… “calm down.”

I mean, I guess that’s one way to put it.

I love these videos from Mathieu Stern. They just make my inner geek happy :D

On the other hand, I now have a brilliant idea for a money-making venture -- start a new screenplay "competition" and have all the feedback generated by AI bots...

Yeah, this seems like a no-brainer. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of viable alternatives to using actual firearms.