BEIRUT: Lebanon’s General Security Friday denied responsibility for banning the anti-Iranian government movie that was supposed to be screened at a festival, although it underlined that the film’s content harms the Lebanese-Iranian relations.
In a statement released Friday to counter the voices who accused the agency of banning the film “The Silent Majority Speaks,” the security agency said that the Iranian movie was not banned from theater, but was rather referred to the committee specialized in examining controversial films.
“When General Security sees any violation of law in the movie’s content, it refers it to the committee,” a spokesperson for the agency told The Daily Star Friday night.
“The committee’s decision is then forwarded for approval to the Interior Minister, who makes the final decision.”
The official explained that the committee includes representatives of the ministries of information, culture and interior affairs, and that it has not yet issued a decision on whether to allow the movie because one of the committee members abstained from a vote.
Although a final decision will not be announced before the last member votes, the majority of the committee members agreed to allow the screening of the movie in a future festival “on one occasion only,” the spokesman said.
However, the film was supposed to be screened in a festival that has already ended.
The statement published earlier in the day specified that the movie accused the Iranian political system of being “dictatorial” and described former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a “liar.”
As a result, General Security believed that the “film insults a system and the head of a state that has a relationship of friendship and cooperation with Lebanon, which negatively affects this relationship.”
Directed by Bani Khoshnoudi, the film concentrated on the 2009 presidential elections in Iran when thousands of people took to the streets to protest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election. The demonstrators who were calling for reforms and demanding a recount clashed with security forces and some of the protests turned violence.
The film was scheduled to be screened Saturday at 6 p.m. at the Metropolis Empire Sofil cinema in Beirut, as part of the Cultural Resistance International Film Festival of Lebanon.
The festival’s head organizer Jocelyne Saab had told The Daily Star that General Security was behind the ban, saying the security agency sent the decision a couple of hours before the screening time.
The agency’s spokesperson and its Friday statement both said that Saab is to be blamed for not securing permission to screen the film earlier.
“Before the administrative procedures were done, the festival’s manager repeatedly called General Security demanding permission to screen the movie, threatening to [launch a media campaign] accusing the General Security of censoring the film,” the statement said.
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