In the aftermath of the Women, Life, Freedom movement in 2022, Iran has ramped up its cultural repression. On April 12, Atena Farghadani was violently arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while hanging one of her political caricatures on a wall near the presidential palace in Tehran. She was given a punishment of six years of imprisonment. In May, award-winning Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof was sentenced to eight years in prison, as well as a flogging, for alleged national security crimes. He fled to Europe, where he attended the premiere of his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.