FILE PHOTO: 70th Cannes Film Festival - Photocall for the film "Lerd" (A Man of Integrity) in competition for the category "Un Certain Regard" - Cannes, France. 19/05/2017. Director Mohammad Rasoulof poses. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo

According to a media report, the Iranian director and Berlinale winner Mohammad Rasoulof and a colleague have been arrested on charges of “inciting unrest”.

Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad “created unrest and disrupted the psychological security of society” after the devastating collapse of a high-rise building in Abadan that killed 43 people in May, the state news agency IRNA reported on Friday evening.

On May 23, 43 people died when a skyscraper under construction in Abadan, southwest Iran, collapsed. The incident is one of the worst accidents in Iran in recent years and triggered violent protests against the authorities, which were violently suppressed.

At the initiative of Rasoulof, a group of Iranian filmmakers published an open letter on the incidents. In it, they called on the security forces to “lay down their arms” in the face of “corruption, theft, inefficiency and repression” in connection with the building collapse.